There was a whoosh and a loud crack as the demon leader impacted a mound of bones, tentacles flailing as the entire thing crashed down over it.

  Damien's boot landed gently from his jump and he twirled his spear back into an offensive stance, launching himself again at the collapsed pile with the intent to strike while it was down. Unlike the demon, he wasn't going to give it time to recover.

  Its tentacles were already raised as it burst from the pile of bones, meeting him strike for strike as he shifted his stance sideways, dodging a piercing strike by a hairsbreadth.

  His feet came up in a kick that sent the tentacled creature skittering back, limbs flailing as it tried to ward him off, but Damien wasn't deterred.

  His right leg stretched forth just as his makeshift spear swept upwards, cutting through flesh and muscles until a single white tentacle flew into the air, crashing a moment later with a wet splash.

  Unfortunately, he couldn't avoid the twin tentacled strikes that landed on him a second later, digging into him as he staggered back.

  The demon refused to let up, even though it was now missing a limb. It struck at him like a hurricane, its remaining limbs flashing from different angles with blurring strikes that pushed Damien's cognitive speed to the limit and then past it.

  He was forced into a slow retreat as he fought against the overwhelming strikes, grunting multiple times as his enemy's blades found themselves sneaking past his defenses to create holes in his body.

  Damien felt his body weakening as blood gushed out, but he fought on, weaving in and out of attacks as his spear swirled like a fan, delivering tiny scratches that slowly softened the hardened body of the creature until he, too, started drawing a stream of blood.

  Leveraging his spear for balance, his leg snapped out like a whip, catching the creature under what constituted its chin. And grinding his teeth against the triple tentacle strikes that tore at him, he whipped his spear back up as his feet touched the ground, drawing a thin line across the neck of the creature... A strike that would have been its end had it not quickly retreated.

  Instead of diving back into the fight, the creature settled for staring at Damien while it slowly stalked around him.

  "What are you doing?" It spoke, and this time there wasn't the usual tone of arrogance; instead, it sounded very unsettled. "How did you become this strong?"

  Content with the brief lull the fight had taken, Damien moved along, keeping the demon in sight.

  "Beats me! I'm also surprised," he said. In fact, he was more than surprised. The sudden strength he'd gotten after killing those demons hasn't gone past his notice. But left with no time to think and a brain-hungry demon right in front of him, there wasn't much time to reason out the cause.

  Granted this short break, it didn't take him long to understand why this demon's mind was so unusually strong, at least for a spirit lord.

  Sure, against someone like Keilan, the demon might not have stood a chance. But that was the thing, he was comparing it to Keilan... Keilan who had called upon an Ascended Technique as a Spirit lord, an impossible feat, if what Gray was saying was true.

  His brother had had to go through an excruciating amount of soul agony to acquire the mental power he had now. And for whatever reason, Damien refused to believe that a demon like this could live through something like that.

  So the only other reason for its unusual mental powers was that as it killed the ego of its victims, its mind devoured their wills and made them its.

  That had to be the only solution, or else why would Damien, his mental representation, suddenly get stronger as more of the invaders died by his hand?

  This realization, instead of eliciting a feeling of disgust from him like it should have, oddly brought forth the opposite, and with a beating heart, he slowly focused on the creature with a renewed look.

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  "What?" It said upon noticing the sudden gleam in Damien's eyes. "I demand that you tell me what you have discovered."

  "Nothing," Damien shrugged with a slowly building crooked grin. "I just figured you were probably a good example of what happens when you get to choking on your own medicine."

  And with a greater level of excitement and no need to converse any longer, Damien dove back in, this time with more gusto.

  His spear strung forward just as his knees slid over the suddenly smooth ground, back arched backwards.

  He twisted out of the way of the flashing tentacles that weaved a hairsbreadth away from his face, and then brought his spear up against the soft spot on one of them, cutting off the appendage in one single strike.

  He came back up on his feet, grinning through bloodied teeth as a huge chunk of his thigh was scraped off like unwanted meat, leaving a full view of his meaty insides as well as a river of blood that flooded out.

  His spear snapped forward, tearing out another tentacle of the creature.

  A tentacle swiped past his face, taking one of his eyes with it and leaving him with sudden darkness in one side of his vision.

  Damien screamed with a frothing mouth as he grabbed hold of the offending tentacle before it could get too far.

  One hand holding it, as well as his right leg which pressed against the chest of the creature. Ignoring his weakening left leg and the multiple wounds that opened up on his body in those few brief seconds, he brought his spear down like a butchering knife, scissoring off the appendage.

  His vision flashed with white light as something slammed into his face, missing his remaining eye by a bit and slamming into his mouth.

  Damien grinned with missing teeth as he stabbed into a nearby tentacle, ravaging it hard enough that the thing simply flopped downwards uselessly when he was done.

  He stretched forth his left hand, grinning with a maddened face as the entire limb disappeared from his wrist.

  The demon's chuckle glitched as his spear dug deeply into its chest, coming out a moment later as the it sharply retreated. But Damien wouldn't give it any reprieve. No, he wanted its mind and he'd have it.

  With his mind already turned mad with pain, he pursued the creature, stabbing his spear into one of its last two remaining tentacles and pinning it against the ground.

  He grabbed hold of the remaining tentacle, grunting as the creature's foot slammed into his sides, but he didn't let go.

  Leveraging his legs against the chest of the demon, he drew the last tentacle with all his might, both of them screaming in high-pitched tones as the limb came off with a loud squelch and another gush of blood.

  Something slammed into him then, and Damien found himself on the ground a second later, breathing heavily as darkness soon clouded the edge of his vision like a slowly-closing curtain.

  Staring at the dark grey roiling heavens, which looked more stormy now as he watched, Damien felt the life slowly leak out of his body.

  Beside him, through the roaring in his head and the audible watering of blood as they left his body, he heard the demon's breath rattle as it choked on its blood.

  One of them would die in the next second and the winner would come out the stronger for it.

  He could certainly have stood up to do something, but he felt so tired right now, like he could sleep forever and dream about all sorts of things.

  In the vast tapestry of grey clouds above him, he could've sworn he could see the faces of his adoptive parents.

  Mara stood to the left, one hand pressed on the shoulder of Leira as the little girl waved at him, while Elas smiled down at him with a nod Damien couldn't discern. Was it approval or... Or...

  A face suddenly appeared in his vision as a strange old man leaned forward. He looked so pale and withered. How was he not already dust?

  His face looked familiar and Damien thought he knew the man. What was his name? Tes... Tesu... T—

  "You have done well, Damien," the old man said with a smile.

  Wait, how did he know his name?

  "Nice to see that you also inherited his savagery. It would have been so disappointing if you hadn't."

  "Wha... What... Do... You... Mea?—" Damien tried but was shushed by the old man.

  "Save your dying breath. One of you will die soon, and I do not want to be the reason why you lose the race."

  That was for the best, Damien thought. Opening his mouth was a chore as it was, he didn't want to experience what actually speaking would be like.

  Still, he needed to look at the sky. If he was going to die, then at least he needed to die with his family in sight.

  Oh, Keilan was going to kill him when he heard he'd seen their parents without letting him know.

  Damien tried to chuckle but could only spit out blood.

  "Tsk tsk, children of nowadays and their penchant for disobedience," the old man said with a disapproving head shake.

  Huh... Was he still here?

  Before Damien could wonder more, the sigh of a rattling breath dying off reached his ears just as his body slackened and darkness took him. The old man's voice was the last thing he heard before his vision went slack.

  "Ahh, Karma... So tricky, so inopportune. One must never forget the debts they owe."

  And as one mind succumbed to Oblivion, another awoke.

  ***

  In the now silent landscape of bones and ash, the sound of chains shattering could be heard just as a distant sound of laughter echoed out, growing deeper from its high-pitched tone until it slowly settled into a dark, menacing chuckle, one filled with promise of a dreadful future to come.