Sensing warmth for the first time in many days, the little girl felt the firm will that she had just built up grumble in an instant. Her watery eyes once again began to pour with tears as she clutched the hand of the man in front of her.
She didn't know where he came from and she had been told many times not to trust strangers. But she didn't care. Seeing someone other than these horrifying creatures and seeing someone who was looking at her with such warmth had pushed her over the edge.
Sorrowful and cracked wails left the dry throat of that little girl. She wanted to climb up and hug the man for more warmth, but her frail and broken legs didn't allow her such comfort.
But seeing how hard she was clutching into his robes, the man seemed to understand her desire. Gently grabbing her, he picked her up and carried her, hugging her lightly and patting her back.
"Alright. There, there. No need to cry anymore."
The little girl's wails only became louder. Her face was buried in his neck as she desperately absorbed as much warmth as she could.
Luckily, she was too immersed in this warmth to feel the dense killing intent radiating from the man. Or perhaps, he just wasn't allowing her to feel it.
Killing intent. No matter how severe the word sounded, Damien didn't think it was enough to describe what he was feeling right now.
The pure and unbridled rage he was feeling, the conscious desire to murder that was greater than any he had ever felt before. Was mere killing intent enough to describe it?
The surroundings no longer held any similarity to the murky swamp they originally were. The bloody red aura emanating from Damien's body had begun to twist reality, creating an illusion of seas of blood and a mountain of corpses.
Damien wasn't a soft-hearted person. There was no way he, who hadn't even batted an eye at the slaughter of so many, could be considered as such. But children? Children were a red zone for him.
For adults, even for teens, innocence could be considered a sin. It was something that was useless unless one had the power to back up such innocence. But for kids? Innocence was the thing only they could retain in this cruel world where everyone else was a murderer of some sort.
To see this little girl who didn't look a day older than five point a rusted knife at her throat, to see her plunge it towards her body without hesitation, it sent Damien over the edge.
The pressure from his reality warping killing desire was like a decree of death. The second any of those humanoid abominations got within range of it, they were crushed into pulp that dyed the muddy ground in a dense black color.
Smelling the scent of another human, a stronger human, those creatures charged forward without fear or care. Even when they saw the others being crushed without effort( they didn't stop. But Damien didn't focus on any of this.
His focus was entirely on the little girl in his embrace. It was probably one of the first times in his life that he lamented not having the ability to share his regeneration.
It could only be counted as luck that Ruyue had forced him to take some of her healing pills with him just in case. After all, she had witnessed Damien being unable to heal due to lack of mana before, and she wasn't one to take chances.
The warmth of Damien's embrace seemed to be overwhelming for this little girl who had been running on pure adrenaline and will for the past few days. After only a few minutes of despairing sobs, she directly fell asleep.
Damien gently pried open her mouth and fed her a healing pill, using his hand on her back to inject mana into her body and gently guide the healing essence to do its job.
'This girl…she doesn't even have an ounce of mana.'
It wasn't something like running out of mana, no, this was a girl who had never slain another in her life, never gained experience. Although it could be considered as normal for a 5-year-old to be as such, Damien had long grown accustomed to the twisted standards of the new world.
5 years old, even if it was incredibly young, it wasn't rare at all for people to force children of this age to kill. This was so that they could get acclimated to the true environment of the world.
While many would just use pills or regular cultivation to boost a child's growth and give them a few levels, the former method wasn't rare at all.
Damien felt immense pity for this little girl. How long had she been struggling with her weak body and pathetic strength? But at the same time, he couldn't help but admire her tenacity.
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In some ways, she even reminded him of himself. Before he had become the Damien Void of today, before he had mutated and gained a path towards strength. Back when he was just a kid who was pushed into a dungeon, when he had strength so puny that everyone felt he was guaranteed to die.
'Actually, comparing the two of us is an insult to her.'
It had taken him so long to build up the will to survive, and even then, that will was weak. It could be said that the battle with the wolf and his descent into insanity thereafter was like a cheat for him to steel himself easier.
But this little girl didn't have any of that. Her strength, her age, it was all below what he had at that time, yet she had done so much better than him in the face of adversity.
It felt like tears would start gathering in his eyes if he continued thinking about it, so he stopped. Turning his attention to the hundreds of abominations that still littered the surroundings, his eyes turned cold.
"Oi, you little shits. You probably can't understand me with your Jin's-dick-sized brains, but listen anyway. I'm going to murder all of you to vent my frustrations, so just wait patiently to die, okay?"
Black lightning viciously crackled in the air, snapping forth like whips of darkness and rending even the wind around him. A layer of spatial mana covered the little girl in bud embrace so she wouldn't be harmed.
Since he made sure that even sound couldn't pass through the barrier he laid around her, he had no need to hold back on using some of his more destructive attacks.
'Besides, too much movement might wake her up.'
Damien raised his free hand towards the sky, his cold and emotionless eyes never leaving the abominations that still attempted to charge him. Opening his mouth, he spoke 3 words that he had only spoken once before.
"Storm Dragon's Fury."
The murky skies became even murkier as dense clouds filled with the weight of thousands of strands of black lightning encased them.
Booming thunder rumbled, causing the ground to quake in fear.
The black lightning within the clouds migrated towards a central point and combined into a massive ball, compressing endlessly until it was too small to see with the naked eye.
And in the next second, it descended.
Unlike the previous time he used it, Damien now had confidence in protecting himself from the aftermath. Not only that, but he was also genuinely aiming to kill.
A small beam with the width of an arm quietly struck the ground. And all hell broke loose.
The destruction caused by that small beam couldn't even be described. A black light similar to a black hole swallowed everything in a 10-kilometer radius without pause.
"Wow…"
A small mutter was heard from Damien's chest. When he glanced down, he noticed that little girl watching the ongoing mayhem with eyes that shone like stars.
Damien smiled wryly at the sight. Even though he had just killed hundreds with the flick of his finger, and even though he was still technically within the blast radius of the attack, his thoughts were elsewhere.
'Fuck. In the end, I still woke her up.'