Chapter 1385: Trace [2]

"Huu..."

"Huu..."

"Huu..."

"Huu..."

His breath was the only thing he could hear.

After passing a certain point, even the sounds of creatures crawling around him disappeared.

And the walls of the ravine kept closing in.

Damien barely had space to squeeze his body through them, and he didn't have the choice to break them either.

After all, behind those walls...

'...I don't even want to know what's behind those walls.'

The fluctuations alone were horrifying. Damien's body instinctually froze when he first sensed them, and his senses screamed, telling him that if he tried to scan with his awareness, he'd die.'

There was a beast here. A beast beyond even what Damien saw kill Gerald.

And the only thing separating him from that beast was the walls.

"Huu..."

"Huu..."

Did he mention the darkness earlier?

It was even worse now.

The environment couldn't get any darker. The suppression weighing down on Damien's shoulders from the ambient darkness was already sinking him deeper into the ravine, but his senses were now also being suppressed.

The All-Seeing Eyes were functioning properly. His soul sense and whatnot were all working as they should've, but his physical vision was darkening, his sense of smell was gone, his sense of hearing was dull, and how sense of touch was numb.

Damien looked up.

There was only the color black. He couldn't see the exit to the ravine anymore.

He looked around.

It was all black.

He could barely feel the walls anymore.

He just kept moving down, getting closer to the thing that called him here.

"Huu..."

"Huu..."

Damien stayed as quiet as possible. He reined in his mana and hid his presence as he descended.

He kept his hands on the walls to keep his sense of the surroundings intact, but as he did so, he felt the walls getting further and further until they were too far to reach unless he moved his entire body.

Evidently, the area had widened into a cavern.

Damien used just a small trace of mana to levitate, turning to look around himself.

"Huu..."

"Huu..."

"Huu-"

Damien's eyes widened.

He held his breath.

'That...'

He almost couldn't believe his eyes.

'What is...that?'

It was just a shadow.

Could it even be called a shadow?

The only reason he could see it was because of the bioluminescent lifeforms living on its scales.

It was also because of them that he could see the true extent of this cavern.

It was at least several billion miles long, spanning deep into the mountain range above. It was so large that the ground above logically shouldn't have been able to remain stable, but because of the densely packed rock that made up the soil in this area, similar to that of the Ancient Battlefield, such problems were absent.

There was definitely something below this place. The signal Damien was following was bouncing around, making it seem like it was either here or down further, however, Damien had no way to reach a place below here.

He couldn't even see the ground.

Because that creature was here.

That beast's body covered the entire ground of the billion-kilometer-long cavern. It was proportionally wide for its length, and no matter how Damien looked at it, he knew exactly what this creature was.

'A dragon.'

It was a dragon beyond dragons, a dragon that even the Azure Dragon couldn't compare to.

It was currently slumbering, and judging from the way the flora was growing over its body, it had been in this position, undisturbed, for eons.

'Do I keep going?'

Logically speaking, a being of this size couldn't be weak. If it woke up, Damien would probably die.

But also logically speaking, it was so large it took up the entire cavern. Its mobility was probably the worst, so it was a question of whether or not it could actually exert its power.

And even if it couldn't...

'...will it let me pass so easily?'

'But if I want that thing I have to go.'

He had been forced to do risk assessment several times throughout this journey. He made it relatively without issues, but the death lurking around him made him wary.

Was this trek worth it?

What if he appeared at that place and found something that wouldn't really benefit him much at all?

That was the worst-case scenario, but he had to consider it at least once.

However, the more he thought about it, the more dissuaded he was from retreating.

The biggest reason was the boundary stele.

'This place was locked away by a trace of existence. That's rarer than rare to find in nature, and in the first place, the boundary steles aren't naturally made structures. The presence of that trace makes one thing clear.'

Somebody who'd comprehended Existence came here at some point and established the boundary stele.

And something beyond that boundary stele was calling to Damien, another person who comprehended Existence.

It wasn't a matter of "what if" anymore. Damien knew exactly what was waiting for him, and he couldn't give it up.

'I have to try.

He descended slowly.

Atop being a billion kilometer long, the dragon was several hundred million kilometers wide and tall.

Damien didn't have more than ten million kilometers to descend before he was already on the dragon's body.

He landed with light steps on the beast's back and continued moving as covertly as possible.

'I should change my footwork.'

He stepped on a strange path, almost making his movements appear like those of a beast.

It wouldn't be strange for some smaller creatures to create habitats on the dragon's body or move along it, so as long as Damien pretended to be one of them, the dragon wouldn't react.

That was his thought process as he tried to find a way around the beast, but it didn't last for long.

Because the ground rumbled.

Nothing really changed around him, but far, far away, an orb of light appeared at the end of the cavern.

No, it wasn't an orb of light at all.

Damien froze once more.

'Fuck...'

There was no turning back anymore.

That was no glowing light orb. That was no moon.

That was the eye of a dragon, and it was staring right into his soul.

'Run? Run.'

Damien turned around and instantly teleported away.

Or at least, he tried to.

But the space around him was already locked.

The spatial layers refused his presence, and as he realized it, he pushed his feet to the ground and started running.

But what did logic matter to a being of this capacity?

Damien had no way of knowing how it did it, but the dragon moved its head all the way around until it was looming over his body.

And within the same second, it opened its mouth and roared.

The sound waves popped Damien's eardrums and made him dizzy.

The Authority of Immortality immediately healed him back to normal, but "immediately" simply wasn't fast enough.

The dragon's jaw snapped shut around him,

And with a strong suction force like something out of a nightmare, it swallowed him into its stomach.

It all happened in but an instant.

In the next, the dragon had already returned to its slumber.

The cavern went silent.

Leaving Damien's fate completely unknown to anyone but himself.