NOVEL NEXT Chapter 186: Life
It wasn't a metaphor. It wasn't theory. It was truth, clear and immediate, clawing at his insides like a beast made of corrosion.
His knees buckled as a fresh wave of agony tore through him, radiating from his spine and out into every limb. The muscles in his arms spasmed violently, fingers curling without his command.
His vision blurred, the edges of his sight swallowed in red and gray, and a horrible pressure began to build behind his eyes, as if something inside was trying to claw its way out.
A scream tore from his throat, raw, guttural and unrestrained.
It echoed through the poisoned air, ragged and human, filled with the suffering of someone balanced between death and defiance. He fell forward, catching himself just before his face hit the stone, elbows shaking under the weight of his own failing strength.
The poison had found its rhythm now. It wasn't merely attacking, it was unraveling him.
Mana threads inside his core began to misfire, his internal circuits spasming in unnatural loops. His organs pulsed erratically. His stomach twisted so violently it felt like his intestines had tied themselves into knots. This wasn't just pain, it was annihilation masquerading as biology, a destruction so refined it felt almost surgical.
But even as his body trembled, even as blood seeped from his nose and bile burned the back of his throat, Damien held on to a single truth: he could not die here. Not in the first trial. Not like this.
At the most crucial moment, the system intervened.
[Extreme poison detected]
[Devour?]
In that instant, Damien realized a powerful truth.
"If I can't fight it, then I'll just god damn eat it up and make it mine! Devour!" He roared.
He stopped resisting the pain and dove into it.
[Devouring]
[Please do not resist]
A strange power bloomed in his soul and guided his consciousness inward, into the core of himself, past the burning nerves and shattered mana pathways, past the flood of corrupted essence.
It reached for the only thing that still moved with purpose, the one force inside him that remained cold and composed amidst the chaos.
His death energy.
A coil of darkness stirred deep within, curled like a serpent sleeping beneath the weight of collapsing stars. It wasn't fast. It wasn't bright. But it responded. Slowly. Impossibly slow. But it moved.
The revolving necromantic core began to turn, not with speed, but with intention. It wasn't power that answered his call. It was precision. Calculated. Unfeeling. Inescapable.
Damien finally understood. And like a teacher that had achieved what it intended to do, the system's power receded.
Damien directed his death energy inward, not as a weapon, but as a scalpel, honed not for war but for judgment.
The death energy flowed into his bloodstream like ghostlight, threading through arteries and veins with eerie grace. It ignored the pain. It ignored the fear. It moved like a surgeon searching for the wound.
And then, one by one, it began to kill.
Not the poison. Not directly. But everything the poison had claimed. Cells blackened by venom, strands of muscle already necrotized, fibers of mana so corroded they twitched with phantom pain, death energy reaped them all.
It was not gentle.
It was not merciful.
The sensation was horrific.
As the dead cells were torn apart, their remains were funneled back into Damien's core, the spiritual dregs of dying flesh converted into fuel. The process was clean. Precise. Efficient.
And excruciating.
Damien screamed again, this time not from helplessness, but from sheer sensory overload. The pain was no longer just chemical, it was metaphysical, laced with memory and essence.
It was the death of pieces of himself, trimmed away like rot from a sacred tree. His nerves lit up in pulses of electric agony as sections of his being were dismantled and rebuilt.
But within the agony, something shifted.
The moment the death energy cleared space, Damien's Silver Grade Body began to respond. The moment there was room to rebuild, it did. Not blindly. Not by repeating the same structures. But by adapting.
His lungs regrew first, their inner lining now denser, reinforced with silver-threaded tissue designed to neutralize airborne contaminants. [Poison Resistance +62%]
[Auto-Regeneration adjusted to include toxic signature profiling]
Damien stood.
He rolled his neck slowly, feeling the crackle of renewed energy threading through every nerve. The air around him still reeked of venom. But it no longer had teeth.
He could feel it. The poison that had once nearly overwhelmed him was now fuel for his next evolution.
His blood adjusted its composition, increasing coagulation and filtration, building new barriers against invasive compounds. His skin thickened microscopically, not enough to slow him, but enough to resist needle-point penetration.
His entire system evolved in real time.
The poison was still there, but now it was facing an immune system restructured for the express purpose of erasing it.
And with each breath Damien drew, the toxin lost ground.
Minute by minute, the pressure eased. The fire in his chest dimmed. The spasms in his arms faded. His mana flow stabilized, and the light returned to his eyes.
Ten minutes later, the poison was gone. Not just suppressed, but outmatched.
And in its place… something new.
His breathing steadied. His steps firmed. And somewhere deep inside, the system responded.
[Status Updated]
[Silver Grade Body: Adaptive Resistance Achieved]
"This trial is insane," Damien muttered inwardly, his thoughts sharp despite the fatigue. "Without the system's support and my silver-grade body, I would have been dead ten times over. Just what kind of monster inheritor is this Gravewalker looking for?"
He shook his head and exhaled, the pain finally receding into something manageable.
A faint smile of quiet satisfaction tugged at the corner of his lips. He had survived again.
"Trial of Life, huh?" he muttered. "Alright. Let's keep living."
Somewhere above him, the green sky pulsed in acknowledgment.
The second wave was coming. And Damien was ready.
The sky above cracked with a soundless rupture, as if the air itself had torn open in a silent scream.
A voice, ancient and devoid of empathy, echoed through the space once more.
"Second Wave: Pressure."