“Ah!”
Xia De and Iluna had just stabilized when they heard a scream that almost pierced their eardrums coming from ahead.
Darkness took a step back and leaned against the stone pillar. His right hand, which had originally swollen into a demonic half-body, shrunk as if deflating, returning to a normal arm. Although it was still absorbing Darkness through the large mouth on its palm, the absorption speed had noticeably slowed down.
The Lesser Angel Potion is effective.
“Sunlight Gun!”
Iluna took a deep breath, shook the holy bell in her left hand, and ran forward, stepping on the black crystal ground, throwing out another Sunlight Gun. This time, the Sunlight Gun hit Darkness directly in the chest. Darkness grunted, his chest exploded, and he almost slid down the stone pillar behind him to the ground.
Clang~
The crisp sound of the holy bell spread.
“Sunlight Gun!”
Iluna made a fist with her right hand:
“Don’t give him a chance, Xia De, quickly act!”
Golden lightning pierced towards Darkness’s throat, his body stained golden by the golden scales behind him.
“Moonlight Greatsword!”
Xia De’s figure appeared from high above, holding his sword with both hands and slashing towards Darkness’s head. Surging spirit poured into the greatsword in his right hand, his entire body enveloped in the light of the silver moon.
Time seemed to stand still at this moment. The man enveloped in Darkness looked helplessly at the golden and silver figures before him.
His eyes suddenly widened:
“You fell for it!”
His originally shriveled right hand instantly swelled and encroached upon the right half of his body, transforming back into the Human Pus form in just half a second. The giant black hand swept forward. Xia De and Iluna, who were already close, couldn’t dodge. The golden lightning and the silver moon greatsword in their hands both shattered, and both of them were sent flying far away.
However, the Lesser Angel Potion was definitely not useless. Although Darkness took advantage by feigning weakness, this also exposed the extent of his injuries.
Although the power of this sweeping attack was strong, it was far less than before. The Human Pus form’s strength displayed in the Merman Temple, with a single blow, could definitely turn Xia De and Iluna’s bodies into minced meat, but now it only sent them flying, causing Xia De to tumble a few times with his mouth open and eyes closed, not even severely injuring him.
The Priest’s potion was not very effective against the demon who had absorbed too much Darkness, but it definitely wounded him at his core.
Xia De rolled a few times on the ground before stopping. He felt some internal injuries, but he could still bear it. His self-sewn backpack was quite sturdy, and the shoulder straps didn’t break, but the god's gift box was flung out of the backpack, and even the sliding lid on top of the box opened a crack.
Xia De endured the pain in his body and turned to pick up the box, but at the same time, he faintly heard a cat meowing from inside the box.
“What?”
He didn’t have time to check. He hurriedly stuffed the box into the bag on his back and helped Iluna up. Darkness did not attack them; he was also nearing his limit, and sending the two flying was just to buy time.
The man leaning against the crystal pillar was laughing madly, his laughter remarkably similar to the demon’s laughter from his right hand:
“I win!”
The man possessed by the demon raised his right hand and finished the sentence he had not completed earlier, speaking rapidly:
“May the Old God crawling darkness bear witness, I shall devour Darkness, witness the past, and forge the future!”
Ancient runes appeared in the center of that black robe phantom. Xia De tried to decipher this rune, and the severe dizziness and discomfort almost made him collapse.
The rune was named “Darkness.”
The Darkness sword in Darkness’s left hand was at this moment imbued with a golden luster; it was undergoing a transformation.
Holding the sword with both hands, he plunged it into his own heart. The man possessed by the demon closed his eyes, pressing tightly against the black crystal pillar behind him. The Human Pus on the sword body re-melted and conformed to his body, and the hilt of the Darkness sword seemed to be absorbed by him little by little.
The light on his body became increasingly obvious. The Hexacle’s Destiny Ring gradually merged with the black robe. The metal on the surface of the brass Destiny Ring peeled off, revealing a golden luster.
Strange white heavenly light penetrated the Darkness above, shining down from high altitude, enveloping Darkness. An ethereal female voice could actually be heard singing. At this moment, everyone in the entire Darkness Domain was attracted by this strange heavenly light, and the situation in the center of the crystal forest was becoming increasingly dire.
The Human Pus form receded. Darkness spread his arms, laughing wildly in the Darkness. A ritual halo composed of thirteen differently colored light spots slowly floated upwards from the ground beneath his feet.
Based on how Iluna awakened last time, once this halo completely passed through his body, the ritual would be considered successful.
“Melt into the Darkness!”
The floating Chosen One spread his arms, and a dark shockwave containing golden light swept across. Borrowing the power of the Old God at the moment of the ritual’s success, the surging Darkness almost condensed the air into black crystals.
Iluna suddenly got up and stood in front of Xia De, kneeling on one knee. The golden scales formed by her Destiny Ring radiated light, like an isolated island in a river, forcibly parting the surging dark power.
But she was only a Three-Ring, and after holding on for two seconds, she took a step back, and the golden scales’ color suddenly dimmed.
Xia De supported her from behind. Darkness surged, and he wanted to roll the dice, but another figure stood in front of the two.
It was Tifa. The black-haired girl was holding the Sunlight Greatsword that had been knocked away with both hands, standing steadily and calmly in front of the two and swinging it forward.
This swing was unremarkable, yet it seemed capable of splitting the sky and revealing the sun. In an instant, the greatsword in her hand dissipated, and the dark tide completely parted, but the sword light split the Darkness in front of her, directly rushing towards Darkness floating in the heavenly light.
However, the blow, which had consumed the Sunlight Greatsword and Tifa’s last strength, strangely dissipated around Darkness’s body. The Chosen One Ritual contained the power of an Old God. Darkness had absorbed the power of Darkness and the past demon, and the ritual’s power was protecting him. Valley
At such a time, only the power of a fellow deity, that is, the power of a fellow Chosen One, could affect him during the ritual.
The Darkness surged again like a tide. Tifa continued to resist in front, but without the Chosen One identity, her resistance time was even shorter. What was more serious was that the darkness box she was carrying on her back had completely turned black under the impact of the Chosen One’s power.
The two behind her simultaneously widened their eyes, because the gear mechanism box, which had turned into a black steel-like material, actually had its surface gears rotate on their own without anyone touching or rotating them, and then the lid silently shifted away from the box body.
In the already dense Darkness around them, rolling black mist surged out of it, splashing out like waves. The darkness box melted through the backpack and fell onto the crystal ground. Tifa finally couldn’t resist and also fell into the black mist.
relic containment lost control.
“I know, it’s not like I haven’t seen it before.”
The surging black mist completely engulfed the three of them.
Xia De grabbed Tifa’s hand with his left hand and Iluna’s arm with his right hand. If there was some visibility just now, then at this moment, the surroundings were completely dark, as if a layer of black ink had been painted over their eyes. In the Darkness, fear unconsciously emerged and grew stronger, causing Xia De’s body to tremble instinctively.
This made him think of Terror Castle again, and the Darkness under the tree that night.
In a world where Darkness descended, the sense of direction was completely lost. Xia De felt as if he had fallen into the most terrifying abyss. The curses against Old God as a thief, the hatred and resentment of seemingly thousands of people overlapping, and the whispers gradually grew stronger. He was assaulted by fear in both body and mind, and at one moment, he even felt that he was being watched by a vast, unspeakable entity in the Darkness.
But the Outsider was no longer the same person as before; he knew what was most rational to do at this moment.
“Don’t mind these voices.”
Xia De hurriedly reminded. Although Iluna was not clear about the consequences of the relic losing control, she still said:
“Be careful, this area will amplify all emotions. If you get lost here, I’m afraid…”
Be careful.
Something penetrated the dense black mist flowing out of the darkness box. Xia De looked forward. Darkness, surprisingly, didn’t care about the ritual he was performing. His right hand, the right hand that harbored demonic power, stretched out like slime, directly entering the out-of-control area of the darkness box.
The right hand wearing the fish training ring laughed wildly and shot towards Xia De’s face. Xia De tilted his head, and the mouth on the palm bit directly onto his shoulder. The sharp pain and numbness made Xia De stumble and almost fall.
“No matter who you are, this time, I will definitely eat you!”
In an instant, it felt as if his entire body and soul were surging towards the mouth on his shoulder. And the reality beneath the illusion was that Xia De’s spirit flowed away first, followed by the nutrients from his body.
Even the black dense mist that appeared due to the darkness box losing control was surging into Xia De’s shoulder wound. That mouth not only tried to devour Xia De but also wanted to use the Chosen One Ritual to not even spare the power of the darkness box.
The surrounding dense mist suddenly thinned, and the Darkness of the Darkness Domain was reoccupying this space.
In just an instant, the insane sense of emptiness and hunger in Xia De’s body indicated that his body was about to reach its limit.
But this area itself could amplify negative emotions, coupled with the resentment-filled dense mist pouring into Xia De’s shoulder wound, and the further emotional loss of control caused by being touched by the Human Pus demon, the insane hunger brought about another consequence.
The bell tolled!
Behind the body enveloped in silver Moonlight, the white steam in the dark space also seemed to be stained with silver light.
The whistle!
A distant, inexplicable shriek echoed through time and space, shaking the profound Darkness.
The giant hammer!
The giant hammer struck from the depths of steam and Darkness. Amidst sparks, the brass Destiny Ring appeared behind him, spinning at an extremely high speed, spraying sparks into the Darkness.
The gluttony Ling Rune, the power he gained from the first drop of divinity Xia De absorbed, suddenly flashed with a violent luminescence. The tendency for the spirit within his body to rapidly flow towards his shoulder suddenly slowed down. In an instant, Xia De, plagued by hunger, seemed to perceive the rage of the Blood Feast Lord when his power was devoured by him.
This empathy, superimposed on a mind affected by negative emotions. When devouring the flesh of desire, the black patterns that had appeared on his body surface flashed by. The figure of desire seemed to appear again in Xia De’s eyes; the one-month influence period had not yet passed:
“Great Sin Chains!”
the moment his consciousness regained clarity, his hands left the two girls beside him, and he simultaneously grabbed Darkness’s extended wrist with both hands.
Black rune chains flew out from his sleeves, wrapping around the opponent’s arm, firmly binding the two together.
The chains were stabbed by Xia De into Darkness’s arm, emerging from the other side, wrapping around once, and then stabbing in again. On the pitch-black chains, the gluttony rune, written with runes from different eras, shimmered with silver spiritual light.
The Great Sin Chains clearly had no offensive capabilities, but at this moment, responding to the power of gluttony, it actually actively absorbed power from Darkness’s arm while piercing it. The black material of the chains became increasingly profound; it seemed very suitable for the power being absorbed at this time.
“What? You’ve seen desire?”
The mouth on his shoulder let out an incredulous sound. The demon’s language, heard at close range, instead intensified Xia De’s desire to devour everything.
Not only was the power of Darkness’s right arm surging towards Xia De, but even the surrounding black dense mist poured into Xia De’s shoulder wound in a violent manner. After entering the demon’s mouth, it was then devoured by Xia De through the spiraling, piercing rune chains on his arm.
Resentment, hatred, coldness, emptiness—the power of relics should not be touched by normal humans. The Human Pus on Darkness’s body and the power of the Chosen One should even less be touched. Xia De, having absorbed these, only felt himself falling into the abyss again in an instant.
His soul sensitively perceived that completely incomprehensible power. Millions of hands reached out from the bottom of the abyss, trying to drag Xia De to hell.
The spirit within his body increased dramatically, but the feeling of his soul “sinking” downwards also became increasingly unstoppable. But before he completely fell into Darkness, the blessing bestowed by Priest Augustus, those cold currents, suddenly moved.
Two forces met on Xia De’s shoulder. That cold blessing froze and dispelled all negative emotions in the black mist. Although it did not reverse the corruption of Xia De’s body by the dark power, it at least ended this absorption, transforming the already absorbed power into pure spirit and injecting it into Xia De’s soul.
As a price, this power, which had protected Xia De throughout his journey, was finally completely consumed at this moment.
