The methodology was simple, really.
There was one advantage Damien always had over his peers, his Void Physique. The only "skill" that formed from the Void Physique's abilities was Devour.
The Devour ability essentially took over the system's function. It converted the fallen enemy's corpse into experience and used that essence to modify Damien's body until it slowly became closer and closer to perfection.
From this, Damien was also able to understand what kind of concept experience was. But, that wasn't his main concern.
What he realized was that his Devour ability was able to directly motivate his growth because it took over the system's task.
Whenever the average person killed another, the experience from the corpse would be converted by the system and added to the experience bar. Damien could completely subvert this process.
It was why he didn't level up when he devoured. Only his stats would increase or sometimes he'd gain a trait.
And so, if he could control what happened to the experience after he captured it with Devour, couldn't he chest the system and power level his friends and family?
It was only a thought until he put it into action. Seeing it work now made him smile wide.
But regardless, this kind of process wasn't entirely healthy. Being force-fed experience would never have the same effect as personally earning it.
Even if Damien raised troops this way, they'd be far worse than practitioners at the same level. They would barely be qualified as canon fodder.
But if it was just a few levels occasionally? Damien could naturally make that work.
After the power leveling session came to an end, Damien conversed a bit more with the three ladies and Xue'er before sending them back into the Sanctuary.
BOOOM!
The battle was still ongoing. On all sides of Damien where his Mirror Domain didn't cover, Shadow Garden's forces were fiercely battling against the beast horde. Considering how organized and calm they were, this wasn't their first time in a similar situation.
'Living in the Outer Wilds must be a struggle.' Damien thought to himself as he watched them.
The battle continued on for many minutes, and while Damien was watching it play out, he suddenly noticed something in the corner of his eye.
'Hm?'
His figure disappeared, reappearing at the far edges of the beast horde. By this point, he was more than just a few tens of kilometers away from the Shadow Garden.
'This beast horde is far larger than I expected. I don't think those Shadow Garden experts are prepared for a horde of this scale.'
With the way they were wantonly wasting mana on larger attacks as they fought, Damien knew they were just trying to get things done as fast as possible.
But the number of beasts he counted was at least a few hundred thousand. Even a 4th class expert would run out of mana trying to kill hundreds of thousands of 2nd classes.
But what caught Damien's attention wasn't the size of the horde. When a certain tentacled beast moved over a certain piece of land, its suction cups kicked up the dirt and exposed a shine unbefitting of the Outer Wilds' normal standards.
What Damien teleported over to see was the source of that shine.
His arms waved through the air, using spatial mana to cut through the ground. Slowly but surely, a glossy rainbow-colored rock around the size of a dinosaur egg appeared in his view.
'This…'
Damien didn't know what the device did, but it was exactly for situations like this that Eve existed. A string of information drifted into his head when he needed it.
'Let's see…Beast Incense Distribution Device?'
It was a bizarre name, but it was extremely direct. Damien didn't even need to glance at the rest of the information to know what it did.
The BIDD series of weapons were created for the military to use during beast tides and other similar events. Its function was to release a pheromone that'd attract beasts to its location. This way, the defending force could make a more concentrated assault and bring the beasts' attention where they wanted it.
In wartime, it wasn't used the same way. It was only natural for a device that attracted beasts to be used nefariously.
In this case, Damien was facing a BIDD-E, the E standing for egg in this case. There was also the BIDD-T tank, an airborne version, and many more other members of the BIDD series.
Seeing the list go on and on, Damien breathed a sigh of relief that he only had to deal with eggs. These were the simplest version and the easiest to destroy.
There weren't any trap functions to prevent its destruction.
Damien clutched his hand into a fist, distorting space and directly crushing the BIDD-E. His awareness spread and permeated the ground as he searched for more.
The beast incense eggs couldn't be used to affect larger areas. This was why other variants were created in the first place. If the people who incited this beast tide only had access to eggs, they'd surely use plenty of them to attract so many beasts.
And Damien was sure that the tide was unnatural.
After all, Shadow Garden was located in a pocket space.
With the way the spatial walls were clear as day while the beasts attacked, one would assume that they acted as a physical defense.
But that wasn't true.
If its existence was known, it existed. If it wasn't, it didn't. This was the most basic principle.
If there wasn't someone directing the beasts to attack specific locations along the spatial wall, even if the beasts walked through the space occupied by Shadow Garden, they wouldn't intermingle.
This was the kind of "superimposition" that Damien wanted to learn. This was the path he found into Dimensional Magic.
But everything was flawed. Now that the beasts were targeting the spatial walls perfectly, the superimposition effect lost all meaning.
Damien rapidly flashed through the battlefield every time he found the location of a new BIDD-E. By the time he was done, he'd already destroyed over twenty of them.
But at the same time, the beast tide that went on for hours on end also came to an end. Shadow Garden luckily had plenty of personnel, so when those original elders used up all their mana, they were able to switch out.
This carousel style allowed the elders to resist the beast tide until Damien finished up with the BIDD-Es and returned to help them.
Nevertheless, the small interlude presented by the beast tide slowly came to an end. Damien was left in the Outer Wilds with his awareness spread, searching for an indication about who was targeting Shadow Garden.
Even the fact that its existence was exposed was a danger. The fact that the force behind that knowledge was also unknown…
Damien's eyes turned a myriad of colors as the yin-yang symbols within them began to revolve. The world's mana became naked to his gaze.
'There it is.'
A trace of residual mana within the pit of the final BIDD-E he found. It wasn't a great deal of mana, nor was it enough to actually constitute a clue.
But to Damien, this was enough.
After all, the scent this mana gave off was incredibly familiar to him.
