When the large doors leading to the dining room slammed shut, the enticing scent of food became even stronger.
Soon enough, tens of maidservants appeared from a certain door carrying hundreds of platters of food. There were only around 65 people in the dining room, but the food was enough to serve even three times that amount.
"Look at those maidservants. Who would've thought there were people living in here?" Demon King Granheim commented while drooling. It wasn't certain whether he was drooling due to the food or the women.
"That's wrong." Eliza immediately interjected. She was the only Demon King who specialized in mental power. In comparison to others, she could see much more.
"These maidservants are nothing more than soulless husks. They are merely completing tasks that were assigned to them by a master, with no will or consciousness of their own."
Damien quietly nodded when he heard her assessment. After his coma, his mental power had also grown tremendously. Although the bodies of the maidservants carried a life aura no different from a living person, their spiritual intent wasn't present.
Spiritual intent was an odd thing. From what Damien could garner, it was just like life aura for the soul. But for people who trained their mental power, spiritual intent could be used to attack and defend as well.
All living beings had spiritual intent. It signified that a soul inhabited their body. For a mental realm master, seeing someone's spiritual intent was normal. For these maids to have none. It meant they were quite literally soulless puppets.
Damien didn't concentrate on the maids for long. After they placed the hundreds of platters onto the long dining table, they left without taking any more action. After that, the dining hall was once again enveloped in silence.
Damien looked around curiously at the others before shrugging his shoulders. "Welp, If nobody else is willing then I'll dig in first."
He dragged a few platters over to himself and opened them up. The delicate scent of delicious meat strongly wafted into his nose.
"Nice!"
Without hesitation, Damien dug in. He didn't even have the common decorum of a person when eating. He simply grabbed and stuffed whatever he wanted into his mouth without care.
"Gaha!"
He took a swig of the unknown liquor that had been presented along with the food and let out a satisfied sound. It was only then that he looked up again.
"Hm? Why is everyone staring at me?"
He noticed that all eyes were on him. It wasn't even just the few people around him that were gawking at him, but everyone at the table.
Feng Qing'er was stunned when she saw his roguish behavior. "Are you stupid?! Don't you know what kind of place you're in? How do you know the food isn't poisoned?" She yelled in exasperation.
"Mm! Mm!"
Sounds of agreement came from the crowd.
"So what if it's poisoned? Why should I care? Do you know how annoying it is to eat raw beast meat for days on end to satiate myself? I need some of this good stuff for compensation!"
Although devouring wasn't technically eating, it was basically the same thing. Although he couldn't "taste" the things he devoured with his skill, he could still technically taste them. It was just that he was tasting quality of essence rather than actual flavor.
As for the beasts he had been devouring over the past few days, they tasted like shit.
"Anyway, enough about me. What have you guys been doing over the—"
Clang!
Damien's words suddenly paused. His body jerked forward and his head slammed down onto the table in front of him, causing the platters around him to clatter.
"Damien?! You fucking idiot! This is why I told you to stop!" Feng Qing'er screamed. She rushed to grab his body and use her Reincarnation Flames to cleanse him of the poison, but all of a sudden, he shot back up.
"Boo!"
"Ahh!"
Feng Qing'er let out a surprised shriek at his sudden action.
"Hahahaha! Miss High and Mighty screaming like a little girl! I never thought I'd get to see it!"
Damien boisterously laughed. On the other hand, Feng Qing'er's face turned red in fury.
This bastard was actually tricking her? Did he have a death wish? But recalling that he was too strong for her to beat, her face flushed with even more anger.
"Hmph!"
In the end, she huffed and turned away with indignation.
"So~ the food isn't poisoned?" Qing Tan asked curiously with amusement in her eyes.
Seeing that Damien was fine, a few others had already put some food in their mouths to satiate the fatigue they'd built up while they were in the Inheritance site.
"Nope. The food is definitely poisoned."
"Kah!"
"Blegh!"
A few coughed up their food when they heard his words. As for the others, they collapsed on the spot while foaming at the mouth.
"See, I told you." Damien nodded matter-of-factly.
"What an interesting kid…" Demon King Eden muttered on the side.
Meanwhile, the rest sat in silence once again. Due to Damien's stunt, around 5 people had died from the poison. But when compared to the total number of them, it wasn't much.
'My poison resistance has significantly increased, hasn't it? Void Essence can purify energy-based poisons, and from what I just found out, the Void Flames can purify physical poisons. It's good that that weakness has been taken care of.'
When he had started consuming the food, he had almost stopped right away. He felt the poison entering his bloodstream and immediately trying to corrode him from the inside out. It was extremely quick and lethal.
However, his Void Flames had responded in kind. They devoured the poison and turned it into essence to feed on, becoming slightly bigger in the process. It was only after seeing this that Damien started to eat.
'Disregarding that, it seems I've been placed with the rest even though I arrived way later…was my performance so satisfactory? Or is there another reason I got to skip the line?'
It was something Damien had been curious about ever since he noticed the people who entered the dining room. These 60 should be the only ones left in the Inheritance site. If not, then they were the 60 most qualified to receive the inheritance.
If it was like that, then why was he able to join them? If the illusion within the small room was counted, Damien had only been through two trials. And both of those trials were relatively easy.
He felt that something was wrong, but he couldn't place his finger on what.
'I'll have to keep it in the back of my mind and stay wary. I can't be letting things devolve like they did in Acier anymore.'
"Anyway, as I was saying before, what have you guys been up to since you got here?"
Damien continued the previous conversation as if nothing happened. The poison was an easy-to-see-through trick, so there's no way it'd be the true purpose of the dinner party. What was to come would naturally be much more trying.
Damien stuck a chicken leg into his mouth and savored the taste. His attention then focused on the girls as he waited for them to tell their story.
"I'll start!" Qing Tan volunteered. "So basically, it went like this…"
And then, she began telling Damien everything they'd experienced in the few days he wasn't with them.
