He had intended to break Damon’s spirit by having medium-sized monsters of tremendous strength and stone golems use the most primitive method of all—
an indiscriminate beating.
Four twin-headed ogres, particularly powerful, had been selected for the torture. A massive stone
golem had also been newly made. Since every guardian had been replaced with liches, Verkis had
needed to use magic to create a new stone golem dedicated solely to torture.
By using the second method, Verkis was able to hear Damon scream within two days.
But all he gained were screams and groans. The bastard’s spirit still had not
broken. Nor did he go mad; whenever he regained his senses, he would hurl unspeakable curses at him.
He was certainly a being that stirred one’s curiosity.
That was why Verkis had not even entered sleep, but was instead immersing himself in repeated experiments.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
“I suppose it’s time to end the physical torture. Shall I try using mental magic this time? I’m
curious to see just how long he can endure. The humans I experimented on before went mad
in less than an hour.”
When Verkis gestured, the ogres approached and lifted Damon. They soon began carrying Damon
to Verkis’s mental-magic laboratory.
“Wh-where is this……?”
Damon, having regained consciousness, looked around in every direction. His eyes were filled with confusion. And
no wonder; only moments ago, his entire body had been getting thoroughly pounded by ogres and stone golems,
yet suddenly he had been brought somewhere completely different. All around him was nothing but white mist.
It was so thick he could not see an inch ahead.
Damon first examined the state of his body. As expected, his body had already been
cleanly healed. Confirming that, Damon once again ground his teeth.
“That son of a bitch.”
Rage toward Verkis surged over him like a tide. It was not simply because he had
tortured him. Verkis was the being who had taken Daphne and his master Doyle from him.
Damon had already clearly witnessed Daphne turned to stone. Verkis had
deliberately used magic to project the scene to him, intending to inflict mental anguish on Damon.
At the time, Damon had felt as if the heavens had collapsed.
Daphne had been turned to stone with tears brimming in her eyes, her face still filled with sorrow.
In one corner of Kranus’s lair. As the memory surfaced, murderous intent gradually
began to creep across Damon’s face. It was pure hatred directed at the race
known as dragons.
“If I can bring judgment down on you bastards, I’d sell my soul to the Demon King if I had to……
As Damon looked around, grinding his teeth, his eyes suddenly widened. It happened after he saw
a figure who had drawn close and was glaring at him. It was someone Damon could never forget.
It was none other than the apostate strategist Sa Junhwan, who had betrayed him. Sa Junhwan was now staring at Damon,
his eyes full of mockery.
“You—how dare you…….”
Before he could finish speaking, Damon hurled himself forward. It was an action born because
emotion had overruled reason. At that moment, the only thought in Damon’s mind was that he had to kill the man.
Damon reached Sa Junhwan’s face and stretched out his hand to seize his throat.
But his arm, withered like a stick of firewood, would not move at all.
“Damn it.”
Only then did Damon keenly realize that he had no strength, and his face twisted horribly. In that instant, a pain
as if his breath had been cut off shot up from his abdomen.
“Keugh.”
Damon was flung into the air and crumpled mercilessly to the floor. Even as his mind wavered,
Sa Junhwan’s jeering voice reached his ears.
“You’ve become complete trash, Cult Leader Dugu. It seems revenge against me is
now beyond your reach.”
Sparks flew from Damon’s eyes.
“You bastard! How dare you run your mouth……”
Before he could finish, a powerful impact struck his jaw. Someone had kicked his face upward
with a foot.
“You insolent cur. How dare you speak to the cult leader……”
Spitting out broken teeth and blood as he raised himself, Damon’s eyes darkened with gloom.
Beside Sa Junhwan, many of his trusted men had gathered before he knew it, all directing contemptuous gazes
at Damon. Among them were even the Red Brow Hall Master and the Yinming Hall Master,
who had died by his own hand. At the sight, Damon could only gape.
“You—you died by my hand……”
“You damned fool. What nonsense are you spouting when we’re standing here with our eyes wide open?”
Sa Junhwan and his subordinates immediately rushed Damon. A merciless lynching was inflicted on Damon,
who curled up like a shrimp.
Thud thud thud.
As fists and feet imbued with internal energy flew in, Damon’s body jerked without pause.
But amid the brutal beating, Damon’s consciousness was instead returning to cold clarity.
‘These are all illusions. There’s no way Sa Junhwan could appear here, and
the men who died by my hand could not have come back to life…… Is this the dragon bastard’s doing again?’
He forced himself to forget the pain being inflicted on his entire body. Judging by the situation, this was clearly
something the dragon had staged with mental magic. Damon, who had a deep mastery of sorcery,
was quickly able to realize that fact.
If so, then the only countermeasure was to maintain a state of no thought and no self under any circumstances.
Every phenomenon occurring around him was an illusion, and if he reacted
to any of it, his mind and ego would surely be destroyed before long.
Recalling that fact, Damon tried as much as possible not to think of anything. Of course, the pain
he felt throughout his body was as vivid as reality, and his hatred toward Sa Junhwan surged up
almost unbearably, but he desperately steadied his mind.
‘If I’m going to take revenge on those loathsome dragons, I have to survive no matter what.’
Perhaps his efforts succeeded, for the pain he felt throughout his body was gradually subsiding. It was
a process an ordinary human would find difficult to endure for even fifteen minutes, but his willpower,
tempered by the Sevenfold Severing Tendon Art, was giving him great strength. However, the trials Damon had to endure
were endless.
Sa Junhwan’s figure vanished, and this time, the Twin-Handed Demon Venerable Wei Qing charged at him,
brimming with murderous intent. Wei Qing, the Demon Cult elder who had departed this life by Damon’s hand.
“You bastard! You dared ambush me?”
Wei Qing’s signature palm force crushed Damon’s chest in an instant. The pain of his majestic
internal force tearing through the blood vessels of his entire body was truly horrific. But Damon
simply endured it.
With the single-minded resolve to survive somehow and take revenge, he was literally
putting forth every last ounce of strength. Every person who had died by his hand appeared without exception
and tormented him. Even Murong Zhen, his childhood nemesis, appeared and spat on him while kicking
him. Even the ogres and trolls he had slain appeared and trampled his body. His
body was cut to pieces and crushed too many times to count.
Yet Damon endured the entire process. With nothing but the single thought of revenge, he overcame
all of it. However, that did not mean there were no situations he found difficult to withstand……
“Seong-ah. How could you do this to me……”
The one who appeared in a wretched state, his chest crushed, was none other than the Shaolin Holy Monk Hyejeong. Although
he was the one who had placed the restriction called the Sevenfold Severing Tendon Art upon him, afterward he had been
the only one who treated Damon humanely. When such a Hyejeong appeared and looked at him with resentful eyes,
even Damon could not endure it. Damon’s face twisted with extreme agitation.
“N-no. I never had any intention of harming the Holy Monk.”
“Do not lie. You already harbored deep-rooted hatred toward me. Is that not so?”
The Shaolin Holy Monk approached, blood streaming from his distorted face. Damon nearly
fell for Verkis’s scheme. The moment he lost his reason would be the shortcut to his mind’s
destruction. Fortunately, he overcame the crisis thanks to the fact that he already had absolute faith in
the Shaolin Holy Monk.
‘The Holy Monk would never do this to me.’
Because of his complete trust in the Shaolin Holy Monk, Damon was at last able to break free
from the heart demon. Had he not believed in the Shaolin Holy Monk’s character, he would already have gone mad.
But his suffering was not limited to that……
“Damon. Save me. I—I’m in so much pain.”
Doyle appeared in a horrific state, half his body burned away. With anguished eyes, he desperately
begged Damon for help. Demons of the Demon Realm clung blackly to him, devouring what remained of Doyle’s body.
But Damon coldly pushed him away.
“You are not Master. Master would never say such a thing under any circumstances.”
When Damon denied him, Doyle’s figure soon vanished. But because of the being that appeared next,
Damon’s patience could not help but reach its limit.
“You said you loved me, didn’t you? Then why did you let me turn to stone?”
A being he could never forget appeared and glared sharply at Damon. It was Daphne,
the part below her neck turned to stone. The endlessly clear light in her eyes was nowhere to be seen;
her face was filled with nothing but venom. The moment he saw her, all color vanished from Damon’s face.
“I-I’m sorry, Daphne.”
“Were you really that powerless? And you still thought you had the right to love me?”
“………”
Damon’s heart was on the verge of bursting. It was only natural, when the most precious being in the world
was looking at him with contempt. Even if everyone in the world cast envious,
hateful gazes at him, that one person alone had not. Yet now, even that one person
was treating him coldly……
“D-Daphne, even you……”
“Hmph! A man less than a worm.”
With a cold snort, Daphne turned her head away. Drained of strength, Damon
collapsed to the ground where he stood. Damon could find no reason at all to go on living.
‘I’d rather die. That would be easier for me……’
As Damon’s heart grew ever more resolute, other beings once again appeared before him. Looking at their faces,
not a single one of them was someone he could take lightly. Damon’s mouth fell open, and
a powerless voice escaped him.
“Zhongli Ling. You—you are the Guardian Demon King Corps?”
The subordinates of the past, to whom he had sworn revenge, appeared and lined up beside Daphne.
Among them was his father, Dugu Wuji, who had passed away long ago. Resentful gazes focused
on Damon. They did not say a single word, but their eyes held countless reproaches.
‘My son. Why could you not avenge me?’
‘I am truly disappointed, Commander. Were you so incompetent that you could not even take our revenge?’
Unable to withstand their gazes, Damon covered his ears. He could not bear his hatred
for his own incompetence. It seemed that even hell could not be more painful than this. The fact that
he had not gone mad even in this situation was truly astonishing.
Damon, hands clamped over his ears, shouted at the top of his lungs.
“Just leave me alone. Revenge or whatever, I don’t want to think about anything anymore, so please……”
Feeling his mind go blank and white, Damon lost consciousness. His honest wish
was that he would never wake again.
‘I wish my life would end like this.’
But he could never go mad. That was because of the foreign energy occupying one corner
of his brain.