Damien suddenly felt himself being ejected from his physical body and found himself floating behind his body as a dark golden ethereal layer began to cover and each and everything in his surroundings, even his own body and Yohr's.
Everything was remaining still as if frozen in time, and he could see how his physical body was also staying frozen while holding the icy remains of Valentina, making him grit his teeth.
However, his eyes quickly scanned his surroundings, and when he took a look at himself, he was surprised to see that he didn't have a body at all but just a dark golden misty, ethereal body that got projected from his body.
And upon a closer look at his surroundings, he could see multiple dark golden layers superimposed on each other and realized that each layer were shadows of time that signified the events of the past.
His soul essence was continuing to burn, but the pain was least bothering him since his mind was only filled with the hope of seeing Valentina again, and nothing else could faze him at this point.
He swiped through each of the layers, trying to search for the specific layer or shadow of time that got created before Valentina got turned into an ice statue.
He knew he was running against time here and didn't have much soul essence to waste, and so he quickly found out the dark golden layer he was looking for, which was the 15th one, and that meant that he would have to go back in time by 15 seconds to save Valentina.
Upon selecting that layer, he also saw how his surroundings changed as well. Time began to rewind as Yohr's body moved back, his own body moved back to how it was fifteen seconds ago while the broken icy fragments coalesced together to form an ice statue of Valentina, and the next second, the ice began to leave her body as if she was getting defrosted and there she was, standing right beside his semi-conscious body that was slowly stirring awake. The exact moment right before Valentina was about to look at Yohr's eyes.
"Ughh!" Damien grimaced as he chose that shadow of time, and immediately he lost 15% of his soul essence, which made him feel excruciating pain but something he considered a small price to endure if he could save Valentina.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})The dark golden ethereal layer began to fade away as he found himself being sucked back into his physical body that was lying on the icy ground, and the next moment, the dark golden layer disappeared, and he realized that his body was exactly in the same languid state it was fifteen seconds ago.
But most importantly, he was astonished to be able to feel Valentina's soul connection! This made him feel elated but at the same time realized that his fatigued body was just recovering from Valentina's treatment, and he wouldn't be able to make it in time to warn her.
"DIE!" Yohr growled, and Valentina was about to involuntary look at Yohr and prepared herself to protect Damien.
But suddenly, she heard Damien's voice in her head, "Don't look at his eyes!"
Hearing his frantic and worried shout, Valentina got confused, but she listened to him as she quickly shut her eyes and instead used her spiritual sense to sense her surroundings.
Damien knew sending her a mental transmission was the easiest and fastest way to warn her and was relieved to see that she quickly closed her eyes before the unthinkable could happen.
However, the situation was still dangerous since Yohr was about to kill Valentina with his large claw, and Damien quickly executed his Myriad of Mirage Phantasms to jump before Valentina and protect her from Yohr's blow.
Valentina was surprised to find herself being hugged into Damien's warm embrace while Yohr got frustrated seeing Damien jump right in front of her and quickly held back some of his strength to not kill the owner of the Origin Seed he wanted.
*Bham!*
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})Still, the blow was enough to send Damien and Valentina flying by a few meters as they crashed onto the ground.
"Damien!" Valentina called out mentally in worry and immediately bit onto his hand to help him heal quickly.
"Valentina…" Damien's eyes became warm seeing her cute cat form, alive and well, while hoping that what he was seeing was not just a dream he cooked out of despair and sadness.
Valentina was taken aback to sense the amount of overwhelming emotions Damien was suddenly showing towards her. But she thought that he was just feeling worried about her for coming here and continued to heal him.
"Begone!" Yohr roared as he was infuriated to see this mythical ethereal beast helping Damien heal fast while he had gone to a lot of trouble to incapacitate him without killing him.
However, he had no qualms about killing this ethereal beast and sent a wave of icy spikes towards her.
Damien was about to pick Valentina up and get her out of harm's way. But she had already quickly reacted by dashing towards the side and transforming into her huge ethereal beast form before taking on Yohr again, but this time with her eyes closed.
"Valentina!" Damien got worried as he quickly mustered whatever energy he had regained to get up and fight along with her. His injuries had not been completely healed, and he could still feel numbness and fatigue all over his body, but he endured it all as he zoomed forward to help Valentina.
Yohr felt a sense of danger because of Valentina's presence and knew that if he let her fight along with Damien, it would be too hard for him.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})So he quickly gathered spirit energy in his eyes and blasted it all onto Valentina's huge ethereal beast body, fracturing her bones, throwing her blood in disarray, and sending her flying over to the other side.
Damien's eyes widened as he found Valentina's body shooting towards him, but he didn't dodge and instead let her get smashed over him just to soften her landing and found himself crashing on the icy wall along with her before dropping to the ground.
"Ugh…" Damien coughed out blood as he fell on top of an unconscious and severely injured Valentina but didn't care about his own injuries as he quickly inspected Valentina, only to feel relieved that she was still breathing. As long as she was breathing, her body would quickly heal, but he could sense Yohr walking towards him, and he was neither in the shape or state to defend himself, let alone Valentina.
Still, he bit his tongue as he stood up and put his fists up as streaks of blood continued to trick down from his forehead and all over his body.
Yohr snickered, seeing his pitiful bloodied appearance and knew that Damien was completely exhausted and was just trying to protect the mythical ethereal beast behind him.
"Boy, for your efforts, my divine self will grant you a quick death," Yohr said as he grabbed Damien casually with his large claws, who couldn't even find the strength to resist him and squirmed inside his grip with a dark expression.
Yohr was shocked that this body now showed no fear at all but instead only hate and anger overflowing from his expressions.
Yohr's eyes glinted with an azure light as he began to interact with Damien's soul plane, making Damien grimace as he felt his soul being forcibly invaded by this entity and was still adamant in not giving up even if the situation seemed hopeless.
He didn't want to lose his newly found life again so fast before he could even live it to the fullest or get revenge on the god who destroyed his previous life. But now, he couldn't even defeat a fallen god, so he found it laughable that he wanted to defeat the god who destroyed his life.
He felt his eyes becoming blurry and his consciousness slowly ripping apart, feeling that death was near.
But at that moment, a cold, sharp voice echoed in the cave…
"Take your filthy hands off of him!"
