'I am stuck between a rock and a hard place.'
When they surrounded him, Damien's face paled.
It became white like a sheet of paper.
'They had plotted against me and succeeded in trapping me.'
'I hate them so much that I want them dead.' Damien glared at them intensely. If looks could kill, they would have died a thousand times. 'But I lack the strength to overcome them.'
They had killed nearly everyone he had come to know over the past few years. How could he not wish to see them dead?
His eyes darted around. All around him were enemies that wanted him dead.
'Retreating isn't an option.'
'Advancing isn't an option either.'
Damien didn't have a place to run to, and he wasn't strong enough to take action against them.
'I will be subdued the second I take action.'
'What can I do to preserve my life in this situation?'
'Huh?' Suddenly, Damien saw something interesting.
They surprisingly flinched when he looked at him.
'They are afraid of me?'
Even though they were facing a mere child who was left with no guards, they were on high alert, and their vigilance was raised to the limit.
Damien was known to have the power to kill gods. According to recent reports, he couldn't access it. And from what they saw, they confirmed that he had no control over it whatsoever. However, although he only showed signs of being a mere level 11 trainee, Marty and his followers couldn't help but feel wary of him.
Facing death, what if he tapped into his innate strength and gained control over his godly power? Wouldn't that mean their end? They could bully the weak and suppress anyone in the same realm as them. But they were no match for someone with the power to kill Gods.
'Hopefully, that won't happen.'
Sweat slid down their forehead. The rebels, Chaotic beings, and the crimson mages closed in on Damien step by step, not daring to be hasty.
Damien looked at them tauntingly, "How pathetic must you be to be afraid of a defenseless child?"
Since he was going to die anyway, why not die after acting fearlessly?
They felt spiteful, seeing him acting so high and mighty.
"All I see is a brat who is terrified of us, with a powerless dog cowering behind him. He is acting bravely to fool us. We don't need to be afraid of him."
"You are right. Look at him carefully. This brat is just a bottom feeder. The rumors about him in the nether realm and the underworld of the empire are exaggerated. His power level is almost nonexistent. I can subdue with one move."
"He is worse than the trash we just disposed of."
"Get him."
An immense pressure dropped down on Damien.
"Fuck!"
He felt as if someone had placed a mountain on his back. It bent immediately. He heard cracking noises. The pain, which was numbing his senses and corroding his consciousness, let him realize what was making them. It was his bones. They shattered under pressure.
Like the loser he was, he fell to his knees.
The skin all over his body cracked, and blood seeped out like water gushing out of a broken dam. In just an instant, he was bloodied from head to toe.
'He is nothing special.'
After seeing how easily they subdued him using their aura alone, they felt more relaxed.
"The good is secured."
"How are we going to split it?"
"Divide it into three equal parts. Each side will get one. Or we can fight to decide who gets it!"
The good they were talking about was naturally Damien.
Marty looked at them and internally laughed, 'These bastards! They don't know I am not planning to share him with them. I want to be the only one to benefit from him. I just need an opportunity to get close to him without arousing suspicion. Then, I can whisk away with him using teleportation magic, and they won't be able to stop me in time. As for the rebels that will be left behind, whether they live or die, what does that have to do with me?'
"Why are you doing this to me?"
Damien didn't know what made him so special that every villain wanted to abduct or kill him. He had heard that he was born with immense strength. But he had never felt it, much less put it on display.
'Do I even have it?' Damien wondered.
'If I have it, why won't it listen to me and kill these batards?'
He was crying.
His body had shattered like glass, his internal organs had ruptured, and he felt that there was a thorn in his heart.
The nine parts of his godly power reacted to the intense fluctuations in his emotions. They flared up and smashed the barrier, sealing them down like raging currents.
Thud!
Cracks appeared on the nine seals.
Memories surfaced from the depth of his consciousness.
These were the memories he had lost when he was abducted.
'I remember.' he muttered weakly.
He was 4 when he lost everyone close to him. His friends, servants, and maids were brutally killed by the rebels before they abducted him. By the time he was rescued, it was already too late. He was like a blank slate.
It took him a few years to recover from that. But the people who helped in that time were killed by the crimson mages.
Before their plot was revealed and the villains were put down, he once again lost everyone close to him except for his parents.
Redness seeped out of the corner of his eyes and tainted the edges of his golden irises, turning them red.
Godly powers rose like tidal waves and smashed the barriers again.
Thud!
The cracks on the nine draconian seals thickened. They were like deep crevices with no end in sight.
"It's nothing personal." Marty kicked the tombstone behind which Damien was hiding, destroying it, and stared at him ruthlessly. "You are born with a power that shouldn't belong to you. We have come to retrieve it."
This scene fell into Damien's eyes, and his eyes reddened.
"I will kill you! All of you will die today!"
Intense hatred for the monsters who killed his teacher and destroyed his childhood sweetheart's tombstone swirled in his eyes.
His godly powers erupted like a volcano and smashed the barrier into bits.
Thud!
The nine draconian seals reached the brink of destruction.
This time, a loud noise came out of his body.
Everyone heard it.
The onlookers felt afraid when they saw the look in his eyes, and they immediately decided to knock him out. They couldn't kill him, not before using the dark ritual to draw the godly power out of his body. But someone was far faster than them.
Marty bypassed all of them using his movement techniques and immediately tried to abduct him under their eyes.
The dog stepped out from behind Damien's back and threateningly barked at him.
"I will bite whoever dares to touch my master! Scram!"
That's what it said.
Everyone, though, only heard a yellow dog barking at them.
"Get out of my way!"
Marty's eyes twitched, and he waved his hand.
A sharp light flashed into existence and cleaved the dog in two halves.
A slash of blood fell on Damien's face.
He blinked his eyes and saw the two pieces of its body falling to the ground with a dull thud.
It was chopped in two halves from the waist.
The light in his eyes disappeared. Replacing it was absolute darkness. Three times, he lost everything he held dear. The memory of a boy crying in a dark corner flashed in his eyes. His tears were licked by the dog. The dog was silly, and the things it did cheered him up. It was supposed to be the saddest day of his life, but the abandoned dog did its best to add color to it and make him happy. And now that very dog laid before him dead.
Redness took over his eyes, and he rolled down the spiral of despair.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
Under the assault of the nine parts of his godly power, the nine draconian seals were slowly getting reduced to dust.
"He is finally mine."
Marty's hand reached close to him.
Damien raised his head.
Their eyes met.
There was not a single trace of humanity left in those eyes.
Only madness and cruelty were left in them.
Such eyes could belong to a person who wanted to kill indiscriminately and end the world.
'Since the world can't tolerate my existence and the god has cursed me with a disastrous fate, they can all die.'
This thought flashed in Damien's mind.
'I need to kill him!'
Marty sucked in a cold breath as he felt like he would die when his eyes met Damien's.
His mind changed.
Previously he wanted to abduct Damien.
Now, he wanted to kill him.
"Die!"
His hand changed posture from a grabbing motion to a killing strike.
Sword Force coated his hand as he chopped at Damien.
It reached an inch away from Damien's neck.
His godly powers were fiercely struggling against the nine draconian seals.
The barrier had shattered. All that was left was to destroy the nine seals, and they will return to their owner.
But that was going to take time.
And time was what he didn't have.
Death was only a millionth of a second away from getting Damien!
'I guess this is the end.'
Damien accepted his fate.
'Why was I even born?'
And closed his eyes.
"Don't do it!"
The onlookers shouted.
They had been plotting against him for several years.
They lost thousands of people to get him. Not a single person who had died in their quest to get Damien was ordinary.
The manpower they had lost just to get him was enormous.
But now that he had finally fallen into their hand, all their effort was going to be put to waste by Marty.
Just when it looked like Damien would be beheaded…
Time stopped.
"Do you desire power?
And Damien met a kind-faced elder shrouded in red mist.
