NOVEL NEXT Chapter 585: Victory and Defeat
"No. I will not accept this." Damon gritted his teeth and continued fighting. There was something beyond his reach. He was sure of it, but he had a feeling that he could reach forward and grab it. This win was not beyond his reach.
He was already far too deep into this fight, and he was not going to give up now.
Every time Damon's fist landed, the broodmother's flesh exploded into clouds of black-green mist, only for it to knit back together seconds later. Her regeneration was obscene.
The desert quaked beneath their clash, an endless, grinding storm of venom and fury. Rivers of toxin flowed like veins through the cracked wasteland. The dunes screamed as the ground dissolved into a lake of venom.
"Damn it," Damon hissed through clenched teeth, his voice hoarse with strain. It was not as if he could continue with this forever. Fighting with his other elements was also not getting him anywhere.
The broodmother was happily fighting in her element while he was trying everything else to bring her down. It suddenly felt as if he was on the losing side.
"Nope. I need to change things up." Damon came to an abrupt halt, and he no longer conjured any more crimson lances or shadow attacks. There was no point.
Poison and only poison reigned supreme here. The environment had become like that. It was simply foolish to try anything else.
Gritting his teeth, Damon started using all of his poison skills one after the other. His venom was superior to hers, and his skills were all upgraded and leveled up to a ridiculous level after the beast nest encounter. There was no reason why he shouldn't be winning here, and yet he wasn't! What was it that he was lacking?
Damon had always been a practical person. Even now, he knew he was fighting a losing battle. It would be in his best interest if he stopped fighting and retreated, maybe fighting with the god damned monstrosity another time with another strategy. But he did not want to do that.
Maybe it was stubbornness, or perhaps he was simply unwilling to run away yet again. He just did not want to give up. Not this time. He also had a feeling that he would be losing something extremely valuable here if he did so. He wanted to know what made this huge ass bug so much powerful than him.
It was the same feeling he had back when he had seen that pair of eyes in the Fairy King's mirage world. He felt as if he was grasping at the threads, trying to glimpse at a fraction of the power wielded by those pair of eyes. This was his chance. He did not want to let it go.
He started using all of his leveled-up poison skills one after another.
[Poison Domain], [Corrosive Pulse], [Poison Nova], [Poison Burst]
Damon unleashed everything he had, and the desert, which was already a maelstrom of poison, was becoming much more toxic and deadly.
Still, the broodmother endured. Her carapace cracked and healed in the same breath, her wounds bubbling with life as fast as they rotted.
Damon did not care. He kept going. He could see that slowly things were starting to get more and more difficult for her. He growled, sweat and blood dripping down his face. "How are you still alive, you oversized maggot?"
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, things started to change. Clearly, the broodmother's authority on regeneration also had a limit. She could no longer withstand the poison Damon was spitting out into the open, and everything became a bit too much for her to handle.
"Fuck!" Damon screamed. He actually did not want this to happen. He still did not understand what he was fighting against and how she was so strong. He quickly tried to take back in all the miasma that he could, but it was already too late.
The broodmother shrieked in rage, and in one final explosion, she simply detonated, becoming a green goo that splattered everywhere. A blinding eruption of green and black spread out from her body, the air itself rotting under its touch. The shockwave hit like a tidal wave of corrosion.
Damon crossed his arms before his face as the blast hit, his scales flaring to life. Even then, the sheer corrosive force flayed through his defenses, gnawing into his skin and muscle. Not that it did anything to him. All the injuries healed just as quickly.
When the storm finally settled, the broodmother was… gone. Or rather, what she had become was no longer recognizable as flesh.
Floating above the dunes was a writhing mass of translucent green, a cocoon of venom and miasma shaped vaguely like a heart. At its core pulsed something crystalline, a shimmering orb that emitted an oppressive, divine radiance.
Damon's pupils dilated. "That… that's not a mana core."
He dashed forward and grabbed it in a hurry.
[Ding! You have obtained a Poison Dao Core]
Damon's eyes widened. What was a Dao core? Was it a true mana core? That means the bug was already in B rank? No, he was pretty sure that the broodmother was still C rank. Otherwise, a single attack from her would have leveled him.
At the same time… it looked like she was maybe a step out of the C rank realm, almost reaching the B rank realm.
And it looked like that had something to do with forming this Dao Core.
"It should be some sort of a true core?" Damon sat down and closed his eyes. While he had so many questions in his mind, he needed to do something else first. He needed to absorb every single thing around him, every single drop of venom in this entire region.
There was no way he was missing out on extracting the fuck out of this broodmother's bloodline. Maybe he could even get a clue to his questions in her blood?