Damien wanted to shake off his thoughts, but they stuck in his mind like a tongue on an icy pole. As he delved deeper into the matter, he realized there were far more inconsistencies in his life than just those few.
'What the hell is going on?'
Rather than apprehension, the feeling bubbling in his chest at the moment was a surging rage that he could barely control.
There were many things he hated in this world, and at the very peak of that list was being controlled by others.
Being used as a tool for their machinations, living his life like a puppet on strings, he hated not being in control of his own decisions. And the fact that he was being made to doubt that very fact, it made him furious.
Sensing his rage, his dragon blood roared to life, along with a certain reddish-black seed that Damien still wasn't aware of. His body was soon coated in a mixture of black-red flames and lightning.
BOOM!
Space shattered around him, falling into the abyss like shards of glass. The wall next to him imploded and crumbled, causing the abyss to widen ever so slightly.
The Void Flames emerged from his body and tried to swallow those reddish-black flames, but retreated in fear as soon as they touched them. It was by no means powerful enough to devour such a flame yet.
But even while all this was happening on his body, Damien didn't notice at all. He had retreated to his spiritual world, watching his memories on repeat as if they were a film.
'Too many, there are too many coincidences. It's like everywhere I go, I'm perfectly embroiled in the grand-scale events of the universe. Is someone truly guiding my path? Or is there something greater at play?'
The worst part was, he couldn't necessarily trust his memories. He learned it in the Trial of Self. The memories in his mind didn't accurately represent the situation that had occurred back then. There were plenty of falsities and misconceptions that had been subconsciously formed, altering the way he viewed the past.
'If I had an indelible memory, this kind of perusing and analyzing might be useful, but I don't. It's useless to be swayed by my recollections when I can't tell truth from falsehood.'
"DAMMIT!" He roared inadvertently. His aura flared. The destruction taking place around him only seemed to heighten as it did. Even the darkness of the abyss was being burned and sundered away by the flame-lightning around his body.
He didn't know why he was so infuriated. He understood why he had become furious in the first place, but without any substantial evidence or indication that his conjecture was anywhere close to the truth, he didn't know why he was getting more and more infuriated as time passed.
The reddish-black seed hidden in his body pulsed with fervor. The more his rage grew, the more fuel it fueled its growth. The reddish-black flame-lightning conjured by it grew at the same time.
If Damien wasn't so deep in the abyss at the moment, he would've caused a second, albeit far smaller, catastrophe in the 3000 Beast Mountain Range.
Thousands of kilometers of space around him was shattered. It looked like hundreds and thousands of crystalline mirrors were surrounding his body. Above his head, an incorporeal stream began to form.
It was colored in blueish starlight, with shimmering star-like motes floating through it. As the stream grew in size, the mirrored space around him became more and more chaotic.
The concept of direction became meaningless, the concept of distance was the same. Walking a single step forward might cause one to move thousands of kilometers downward. It was a disorienting effect that would cause weaker-willed people to directly lose their minds.
But more than that, everything seemed to slow to a crawl within this space. A falling leaf took hours on end to go from the top of Damien's head to his feet.
"Kahak!"
Damien keeled over, copious amounts of blood leaking from his lips. It was only then that he finally became conscious of his surroundings.
The reddish-black seed in his body stopped pulsating. The indescribable rage he was feeling disappeared along with it. Even the flame-lightening surrounding his body was retracted as if nothing happened. Damien didn't notice its existence from start to end.
However, the domain around him was still in effect. His eyes widened when he saw it.
'Space-Time River.'
That insane blackness that almost caused his ego to disperse, the shimmering river of starlight that brought it back and showed him glimpses of the future…
Even if his memory of that time had been fogged over and almost wiped completely, the impact that river had on his subconscious wasn't small at all.
It was so much so that when it came time for him to finally form his domain, he had used that river as inspiration for the concept.
To see a version of it in front of his eyes, no matter how much smaller, less powerful, or less profound it was than the original, it still brought a smile to his face.
Even with blood still dripping down his chin, even with more blood threatening to spill out of his body the longer he kept the domain active, he wanted to keep looking at it for just a little while longer.
'My goal…my aspiration…'
It was a construct that man couldn't dip their hands into, something that could erase the ego and peer into the fate of even someone who had achieved True Godhood.
An inviolable law.
That was what the Space-Time River represented to him.
Finally, after a few seconds that felt like an eternity later, Damien canceled his domain. Even with his mana capacity exploding to 50000 points, the Space-Time River, even a cheap imitation of it, wasn't something that he could sustain properly.
'Tch! I can't reach for the skies when I haven't even managed to climb to the top of the well yet. The Mirror Domain is enough for now. As for the Space-Time River, I'll achieve it in due time.'
As the Space-Time River Domain had been canceled already, his Transcendent Regeneration immediately went to work and healed his internal injuries within minutes.
The fact that it wasn't done in seconds was testament to the level of concept he had tried to grasp far before he had the qualifications to.
And as soon as he was healed, he wiped the blood off his face and changed into a fresh set of clothes that wasn't stained in it, teleporting out of the abyss and returning to Ruyue's side. His last task for the immediate necessity of the Sanctuary had been completed.
Everything else could be done as it was required to be.
"What did the old man say?" Damien asked lightly. The transmission talisman in Ruyue's hand was already dim, indicating that the call with Tian Yang had ended.
"Nothing much. Just that he's eagerly waiting for our return, and that I should punish my rebellious Junior Brother if he tries to do anything funny."
"Oh my! How could I ever dare to try anything funny on my Senior Sister? I'm an innocent and pure man, don't you know?"
"Yes, yes. Innocent and pure. Just as pure as that bitch Eliza that you were talking about earlier."
"Kuhum…!" Damien obnoxiously cleared his throat and looked away. It seems Ruyue was still holding a grudge over that.
A few days ago as they were sharing their Trial World experiences with each other, he may or may not have let it slip how he played with a certain Slutty Demon Queen. Since then, Ruyue had been constantly giving him the cold shoulder, forcing him to give her the Queen Treatment so that she would forgive him.
'Damn my big mouth…don't talk about other women in front of the one you're currently attending to, isn't that the main rule for not losing your life as a man with a harem?'
Of course, Demon Queen Eliza, that most likely dead man-eating witch, was never even close to a harem candidate, but the rule applied nonetheless.
Damien shook his head wryly. It looks like he'd need a few more days of coaxing before he could get back on Ruyue's good side. For now, he needed to change the topic.
"Anyway, are you ready to leave?" He asked smoothly. That was a lie. He cringed at how poorly veiled his attempt was.
Ruyue rolled her eyes at his obvious behavior. "Since we have other things to do, I'll forgive you for now. But don't think I'm appeased."
"Yes, yes. If my Queen demands it, it shall be done!"
Ruyue nodded triumphantly. "Good! Then, send me back into the Sanctuary. Let us go to the Empyrean Dragon Realm where I can meet my first and third sisters."
Damien's wry smile grew. That was definitely another jab at him, but at least this time it was light-hearted. Ruyue often actively came to him to hear stories about Rose and Elena, and he had caught her once trying to think up the best way to introduce herself to them when they met.
He knew that she had already accepted the two of them in her heart, so he didn't mind these kinds of light-hearted remarks. Besides, he was technically being unfaithful to all of them, while also being faithful to them all at the same time. In this kind of situation, maybe he deserved to be teased a bit.
But he wasn't going to just let her off easy. He was Damien Void! A man who repaid even the slightest grievance a hundredfold! He would make sure she understood the consequences of teasing her husband.
His arms wrapped around her waist.
"Go? Who allowed you to go?" He moved his lips to her ear, nibbling on her earlobe before he whispered, "your lascivious husband demands your company on this trip."
And without allowing her to respond, he teleported away, leaving the rubble of the 3000 Beast Mountain Range behind to start a new journey.
