Chapter 313: Chapter 313

A small, sharp motion—barely more than a breath through strained muscle.

But it was deliberate.

And with it, something shifted.

His spine arched subtly. Fingers curled tighter against stone. Blood slicked his arm but no longer flowed freely. The ground beneath him no longer blurred—it waited.

That whisper of something slicing through air.

Fingers snapped up with perfect timing, cutting through the air—

His palm closed around something.

Momentum jerked his arm slightly, but his grip held firm.

Slowly—deliberately—he turned his head, still pressed half to the dust.

His eyes fell on what he held.

It looked like an arrow, but not one forged or carved. A long, thin needle of darkened crystal and sinew, feathered with flickering strands of shadow that hadn’t been made but grown.

It throbbed faintly in his grasp, almost alive.

Damien’s lips parted.

He stared at the thing, unblinking.

And the world around him changed.

The haze—the dreamlike filter of exhaustion and death—peeled away like old skin.

He stared at the thing in his hand, chest rising slow, deliberate. Blood still soaked his body. Cuts still burned. But they no longer mattered.

And something primal—something deep—knew what that meant.

Low at first. Rough, cracked.

The sound bubbled from somewhere raw inside him, wild and real. It wasn’t the laugh of victory. It wasn’t even sane. It was the laugh of a man who had been looking at the world through fogged glass, and suddenly realized—

"I wasn’t seeing the world at all," Damien whispered, the grin still splitting his bruised, bloodied face.

And what he saw stole the breath from his lungs.

The ruins, the stone, the vast plains—they hadn’t changed. But what had once been empty, desolate space now buzzed with hidden presence.

The sound filled the air—soft, but relentless. Not one source. Many.

All around him, figures shimmered into view.

Not cloaked in invisibility. Not hiding.

They’d always been there.

He simply hadn’t had the sight to perceive them.

They were scattered all across the ground, some of them on the ground, some of them not.

Things shaped from chitin and tendons, some with wings too thin to fly, others dragging limbs that didn’t belong on any earth-bound creature. Insectoid monsters, their shells glistening with oily sheen, eyes glowing with unspoken malice.

Dozens—maybe hundreds.

But not one moved closer.

Damien didn’t flinch. Didn’t step back. Didn’t show fear.

Because there was none left.

Exhaustion still clung to him like old chains, but it no longer controlled him. Hunger hollowed out his gut, thirst burned through his throat like flame—but it was real. Immediate. Alive.

These twitching, clicking, buzzing horrors?

They didn’t disgust him.

He was done being prey. Done running, stumbling, bleeding into dust. His body had been ground into the brink of death, then stitched back together by something older than cultivation, deeper than training. Mana didn’t just flow through him—it recognized him now. Not as a visitor. Not as an intruder.

But as a thing that belonged.

"Meat..." Damien muttered, voice hoarse, cracked.

But it wasn’t weakness.

His mouth was dry, his limbs aching, and yet—he smiled. Not softly. Not politely. It was a wide, sharp grin, teeth bared like a starving animal that had just found its first meal in days.

The creatures shifted.

They felt it. That shift in air. In stance. In intent.

Their chittering didn’t sound so mocking now.

He reached back slightly with his shoulder, flexing the muscles along his spine—feeling how they answered, how the mana now nested in his joints like oil in an engine.

His right hand curled around the strange needle-arrow. It pulsed faintly in his grip. Still warm. Still alive.

He pushed off the ground, and his body responded like a bowstring snapped free—fast, clean, effortless.

Dust exploded in his wake. Thɪs chapter is updated by NoveIꜰire.net

And then Damien was moving.

Not running. Dashing.

The needle-weapon slashed forward with instinctive precision, carving a line through the air. One of the insectoid creatures lunged too late—its spined limbs already extending—and the needle drove through its midsection with a wet crunch.

The thing screeched, half-liquid, half-glass, and collapsed in a twitching heap.

The scent of ichor hit his nose—pungent, thick, and for a moment?

A sudden ripple through the swarm as dozens of insectoid heads turned in jagged synchronization—compound eyes locking onto Damien as one.

A shriek tore through the air, like metal being peeled back from the inside. Wings unfurled—thin, translucent sheets vibrating so fast they shimmered like heat mirages. Claws clicked. Mandibles snapped. The whole swarm surged forward.

But Damien was already moving.

He ducked low, legs coiling and launching him between two onrushing forms. His feet skidded across the dust, traction flaring as the mana in his muscles thrummed alive. A claw the size of a man’s torso slashed overhead—WHOOSH—and missed by inches.

Damien twisted mid-slide, driving the needle upward into the beast’s exposed gut—SCHLACK. Chitin cracked like ceramic, ichor sprayed hot across his face, and the thing convulsed, screeching as it folded in half.

Another lunged—wings buzzing, claws like scythes—but Damien pivoted off its corpse, launching himself into the air. His heel came down on its head mid-leap—CRRNNCH—flattening its skull into the ground with a burst of black fluids and snapping bones.

"Too slow," Damien growled, voice low, ragged with bloodlust.

They came at him in a flurry now—multiple angles, screeching like glass being ground into dust.

One claw scraped his side—SKRRK!—but he was already inside its guard, jamming the needle into the monster’s mouth and ripping downward. Its lower jaw split, mandibles flailing as it dropped twitching.

Another tried to flank. Damien spun, low, elbow first—THUD. Its head snapped sideways, dented, and he followed with a downward strike, his knee crushing the insect’s thorax—CRACK-SQUELCH.

No form. No technique.

A third came—he caught its wrist in one hand, twisted, POP—ripped it from the socket and used the limb as a weapon, bludgeoning another mid-flight.

Ichor soaked his chest. Bits of sinew clung to his arms. He didn’t blink. Didn’t wipe it off. His breath came in deep, hard drags.

SKREEEE— and FLAP FLAP FLAP— wings beating as they turned, scattered.

Back into the hollows beneath the ruins from which they’d crawled.

He stood among the corpses. A dozen. Two dozen. More. His own blood soaked into the dust alongside the monsters’ black ichor. His limbs trembled—not with fear. With aftermath.

And without hesitation, without thought—

He grabbed the nearest carcass by its broken limb and tore into it.

Teeth clamped onto flesh—not flesh like any beast he’d eaten, but dense and salty, spongy and bitter. A bite. A rip. A chew.