My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger Chapter 907 - 908: Something Bump In The Night

Having three stunning women sharing his tent during the midnight hours made for an impressive scene, yet Damon found no joy in it whatsoever.

Actually, a sense of discomfort gnawed at him. Yes, discomfort—that captured it perfectly.

Seras had entered his tent, catching him yet again in an awkward spot with a young lady, though he refused to let it faze him.

The real issue was her showing up in his tent at all.

"What... what brings you here," he inquired, keeping his face casually indifferent.

She gave her head a shake.

"I considered ending your life, but your performance in the war games won me over somewhat, and now we're at this point. You understand the reason for my visit, right."

Damon paused briefly to ponder the motive behind this woman's presence in his tent.

His gaze swept over her from head to toe before he shut his eyes.

"You look to be around my mother's age."

Seras's eyes tightened at his words.

Next, a grin spread across his face.

"No problem at all, since I go for women mature enough to have raised me."

Disgust and revulsion twisted Seras's features even more as she caught sight of his look.

"That's not my purpose for coming. I'm here because yours is the sole working bath in this wretched spot."

Damon halted for a second. A smile tugged at his lips as the error dawned on him, but retreating wasn't an option anymore.

"Ahh... ahh, my apologies. Your signals seemed unclear. I assumed you preferred the youthful type. I thought, being alone for ages, you'd crave trying someone younger. I... sorry about that, truly."

He cut himself off upon sensing the icy murderous aura radiating from her.

Seras folded her arms across her chest.

"I should've taken the shot to eliminate you back then. And I'm not so ancient. In truth, I'm rather youthful."

"As you wish, aunty."

In a flash, she seized his throat, closing the gap between them.

"Repeat that. I challenge you," she murmured with chilling menace.

"Cough, cough. No rudeness intended. I only meant you knew my parents well. If my mother lived, she'd likely insist I address you as aunty, and I'd recall you as the voluptuous aunty," he yelped while she tightened her grip.

Her expression twisted deeper, a frosty smirk playing on her lips.

"Well done, Damon Grey. Every moment near you seems to fuel my rage more. Alright, alright. You've picked the path of torment."

"Ahhhhhhhhh!"

A shrill cry shattered the stillness, though it didn't originate from Damon. It echoed from beyond the tent.

Damon shot a look at Seras, who released him as he melted into the shadows. Moments later, he slipped out of the tent behind her.

The expedition team's members were all geared up fiercely with arms, wielding radiant artifacts that lit up the shadowy woods like they anticipated an emergence, but Damon detected no threat.

Several squad members knelt beside a figure. These were clearly the healers, channeling their spells to preserve the individual's life.

A ring of defense formed by knights and barrier-wielding mages encircled them. Damon and Seras drew near.

Upon arriving, Damon saw it was one of the nine hundred Seras had led. The man was evidently a priest. Damon hadn't spotted it earlier due to his armor and lack of temple insignia, but the temple had sent participants to this venture too.

Dark, bulging veins marred his face. His breaths came faint, and eerie black patterns crawled across his form.

Damon looked toward Seras, whose face remained icy.

"A curse afflicts him." He knelt, examining the spot where his armor bore a puncture. Some force had inflicted this, but it matched no beast Damon knew.

"Did you dispatch the creature that struck him," he questioned, though it was plain they hadn't. What he truly sought was if they'd glimpsed it.

And as expected, the situation was as dire as he'd feared.

"We caught no sight of the culprit," a knight replied, staring into the gloomy woods.

Damon turned to Seras.

"He wasn't part of the night guard, placing him in the camp's heart. Still, an intruder slipped through our every detection to strike down one of ours."

Seras linked her arms, her look stern and frosty.

"The thing must possess sharp cunning. It spared him when it could have finished the job, suggesting it's lingering. Its aim is to delay us, aware we'll never abandon a comrade to perish."

Damon's eyes sharpened, his instinct for peril buzzing.

Such foes ranked as the most dreaded encounters. No, they were horrors—the term for these sly beings in death zones. This surpassed a mere monster.

Damon opened his mouth to speak when Seras lifted a hand to silence him. She dropped to a crouch beside him and bent in, her features rigid, gaze intense.

"Can you catch that sound," she breathed out deliberately, volume just for his ears.

Nothing reached Damon's ears. The woods lay hushed. Utterly still. Not a whisper from nocturnal creatures.

Understanding hit him, widening his eyes.

Silence gripped the forest.

Her whisper dragged on.

"The forest itself. It senses our presence. It's observing us. And this marks only the start."

Her words sent every hair on him bristling upright. Right then, Damon experienced that same chilling dread as arising in the Duhu Mountains amid all those loathsome terrors eyeing you.

In that instant, a stare fixed on him. An entity peered from the gloom nearby, almost coaxing him to turn, whispering of its nearness.

Darkness blinded all others. Except Damon.

Shadows shaped his vision. His core steeped in shadows, lit by Lazarak’s divine spark's void. No obscurity escaped his sight.

Yet as he peered into the blackness, it glared right back.

Along the treeline, beneath a massive tree's base, it met his stare.

Its form stretched high.

Wait, it crouched low.

It loomed near.

It hid distant.

Its focus pinned on Damon.

Damon's locked on it.

For that heartbeat, the world shrank to just them.

Damon blinked once.

Gone in a flash.

But persisting all the same.

Seras caught his stare, yet the beams revealed only an aged tree amid the woodland's countless others.