044 FOUND THE GIRL
Damen wandered deeper into the tunnels of Death Mountain, cutting down stray Shadow Hounds whenever they crossed his path.
He was stronger now, faster and deadlier, but the weight of exhaustion pressed on him. Finally, his body gave in, and he collapsed against the cold stone, drifting into sleep.
When he awoke, his fatigue was gone. His bone blade was gone too returned into his hands.
Damen looked at his hands and inspected them. "It's turned back to normal", he cried in joy.
There were other changes to his body though. His body felt harder, sharper, as if his skin itself had transformed. He pinched his forearm and blinked.
His flesh was dense, and unyielding.
"Did I just… grow body armor?" he whispered.
He fumbled for his phone. A new stat had appeared to his shock and surprise.
Armor: 13
"Damnit," he laughed in disbelief. "I've got innate body armor now. Who needs the crappy cloth from Aukuoma's auction—or any clumsy gear at all? My skin is my armor."
And there was more.
His vision now pierced through the dark with clarity, sharper than night-goggles. His instincts were heightened, his body humming with strange power.
"How did all these happen to me suddenly?" he asked.
A theory formed in his mind: The Eye of Ra wasn't a simple artifact… it was a treasure of epic proportion once it merged into his body. Once merged it must have granted him superpowers.
He glanced down at his chest.
The amulet, the Eye of Ra, was gone. There was nothing but a faint, glowing tattoo of an eye exist where it had embedded itself.
The Eye of Ra had merged with him completely.
"I ate the Eye of the Ra?" he mused.
He considered how the Eye of Ra has transformed him.
First came Blood, a hidden stat that turned his killing into fuel, flooding him with battle-frenzy. Then came Armor, his very flesh hardened into natural plating.
And there was the bone blade that he could extract out to kill the strongest of blue bloods.
Suddenly another notification appeared on his phone.
"New skill has been acquired: Fist Form Blade"
Damen understood immediately. The bone blade extension from his hand wasn't a freak mutation- it was a new meta skill called Fist Form Blade.
"I never expected there could be a meta skill that granted a powerful meta weapon", he thought.
Damen reached for the live feed of Fenyl from the Veyran team. He's had him mined ever since they came to the mountain and he could see his live feed.
Fenyl was still where he was earlier… at the Veyran command post. They hadn't aborted the mission yet.
Then he froze suddenly.
A soft but high-pitched scream from a desperate woman was heard coming from deep in the tunnels. Damen's new instincts flared, pointing the direction of the call like a compass.
Without hesitation, he sprinted to the sound, drawing him deeper into the mountain.
In a cavern lit by faint blue veins of crystal, he found her—a girl, her body slick with blue blood, surrounded by a dozen Shadow Hounds, cornering her.
"Help me! Someone, please!" she cried.
Damen's body reacted before his mind caught up. He Flash Dashed, appearing between her and the beasts.
The girl's eyes widened in shock when she saw him.
"Damen Dark… is that you?"
Damen didn't answer.
He already knew who she was. The entire expedition had been built around her disappearance. She was Eryn Veyran. She was the girl everybody was looking for.
A Shadow Hound lunged from the shadows.
Damen's instincts flared. He calculated its trajectory in an instant, his bone blade suddenly materializing in his hand. With a swift, precise strike, he drove it through the beast's neck, severing it.
The creature collapsed, dead.
Eryn froze at the sight.
She had known Damen was a genius in middle school, but she had no idea he could be a demon in combat. "And those hands…and blades."
Another hound rushed at them.
Damen struck again, then again, each blow flawless, leaving no room for escape. Within moments, the cavern was silent, littered with the corpses of blue bloods.
When the last hound slumped, the pale blades in his knuckles slid back into his hands like teeth pulling into a gum.
"I'm getting used to this," Damen muttered, flexing his fingers until the numbness eased.
He turned to Eryn. His face went abrupt and hard.
"Do you know what kind of trouble people had to go through just to find you?" he asked.
She sank to the stone, trembling. "I didn't know it would come to this… I just wanted to find my mother." She leaned against him, sobs breaking free in wet, hiccupping bursts.
Damen stiffened, caught off balance by her grief.
He put a careful, uncertain hand on her back and patted once, and twice… it was an awkward gesture, a human thing that would help her let her grief run out.
When her breathing evened, he said, "I'll send you back to the Veyran command post. You can go home."
She pushed his chest with a shaking hand and met his eyes.
"No. I've come this far. I can't turn back now. I must find her—or at least know what happened to her," she insisted stubbornly.
There was a conviction sharp as steel behind Eryn's pleading, a haunted hope that refused to die. Damen saw it and, somewhere beneath the exhaustion, something like resolve sharpened in him.
"Alright," he said. "I'll help you find your mother. Where do we start?"
Relief flooded her face like light through a crack. "You… will?"
"Yes." He answered firmly. "And until we find your answer…. nobody goes home."
----
"How did you end up here all by yourself?" Damen asked, his voice low.
Eryn's lips trembled. "I… I came with a team. But they're all gone now."
She wasn't lying. She had marched into this mountain with an expedition force containing D ranked meta humans and experienced mercenaries.
But the mountain had swallowed them whole. Blue-blooded predators struck from the dark, one after another, until she was the last.
If not for Damen's sudden arrival, Eryn wouldn't have lasted another hour.
"They were all gone?" Damen pressed. "Even with D-rankers and all your fancy toys?"
Her shoulders shook. "This mountain is more treacherous than we thought. I… I suspect our scanners don't work properly here."
Damen's eyes narrowed. "Funny. I've heard the stories. Each time you come, your entire team disappears. But each time, you walk out alive. You are really lucky."
Her head jerked up, eyes wide. "I don't know why. I… sometimes it feels like I have a guardian angel here who will protect me. That's the only reason I had the courage to return."
"But you never thought about the crews you dragged with you each time you came," Damen said coldly. "None of them survived."
Eryn's tears spilled fresh. "It's not my fault!" she cried.
Damen's smirk was thin and humorless.
"Do you know where your mother went?" he asked.
"I don't. But I've searched nearly every sector on this mountain." She pulled up a glowing map on her datapad, the display flickering against her tear-stained face. "Everywhere except here."
"Here as in where we are standing?" Damen asked.
Then his expression froze. His enhanced senses picked up the scrape of stone, the slow drag of something massive through the tunnels.
There were claws and carapaces, and it's heavy.
Something was coming. Something big. And it was hunting them.
"Damnit, we're in danger."
-----
045 MOTHER
Eryn pulled a bulky stand from her pack and planted it between them. Her fingers raced across the control pad, activating the device.
The frame unfolded like a great metallic umbrella, and with a sudden pulse, a shimmering dome of energy surrounded them.
"You're carrying a portable force field?" Damen asked, stunned.
"Yes, but this is the last one I've got. The others are already destroyed," she said breathlessly.
"Then let's hope it holds."
A deafening crash cut through his words as something massive slammed against the dome. The barrier rippled violently, but held—barely.
Then they saw it.
A towering female form emerged from the dark, muscles plated with a steel-like carapace that gleamed in the glow of the force field. Her body was almost human—except for the jackal's head that snarled above her shoulders, jaws dripping with blue ichor.
Damen froze. "How the hell does a Blue Blood have a human body?"
Eryn's face drained of color. "She's no ordinary blue blood. She's one of the Deacon of Annubis… the leader of the Shadow Hounds."
"So, we've stumbled onto the boss," Damen muttered grimly.
The Deacon struck again, her claws hammering the barrier. The field groaned under the impact, its glow stuttering. One more hit and it would collapse.
"The shield won't last…what do we do now?" Eryn cried hopelessly.
Eryn was a kind of irony to Damen. For someone who dared to venture into a dangerous alien world five times knowing fully that it was dangerous and fatal… in the end she still fears.
"Stay inside," Damen ordered. "I'll handle her."
"No, you'll be killed if you go outside!"
"If I don't, you'll die when the barrier breaks. Keep it running as long as you can."
With no choice, she opened a gap in the shield. Damen slipped through, his Fist Form Blade extending from his hand with a metallic scrape.
He dashed forward, his strike aimed at the Deacon's throat. The Deacon twisted aside with fluid speed, his blades missing her by mere inches.
"You're fast," he growled, circling her with boxer's footwork.
Her jackal eyes gleamed with cruel amusement. Then she lunged. Her claws raked across his chest and shoulder, sending him crashing into the stone wall.
Damen's bones cracked and his blood sprayed around.
"Damen!" Eryn screamed in horror.
"Dammit… she broke my shoulder," he snarled, forcing himself upright. His left arm hung useless. He realized with dread that his human body couldn't match the blue blood's strength.
The Deacon stalked closer but didn't finish him. She was toying with him like a cat playing with a mouse.
"You think I'll die here?!" Damen roared through clenched teeth. "I survived the gangs. I survived the hounds. I'm not dying to you!"
The Deacon lunged again, her strike shattering his conjured shield and tearing into his other shoulder. He collapsed to the ground, the pain he felt was blinding.
"Damnit, she's got both my arms," Damen cried.
But then—something inside him snapped.
The tattoo of the eye on his chest flared with a blinding light covering the dark cavern in daylight.
The Deacon scrambled to the back, her eyes scorched by the light.
"What is this meta skill?" Eryn asked surprised.
Damen didn't answer her. His body convulsed with a guttural growl not entirely his own. His wounds seared shut as muscle and sinew surged, his frame swelling with unnatural strength, his body covered with unnatural armor.
"What… am I becoming?" Damen gasped, his voice half-human, half-beast.
The Deacon paused, for the first time looking uncertain.
"Focus on the fight! Think about this after," Eryn shouted from within the dome.
Damen rose with strange dark flames licking from his skin, and his eyes burning with a godlike fury. For the first time, he didn't just look like a man facing death.
He looked like something that could kill a Deacon of Annubis.
-----
The empowered Damen drove forward, his blades flashing. His speed now matched the Deacon's—her strikes no longer found him so easily, though his counters couldn't land cleanly either.
They circled each other like predators, sparks scattering each time bone blade met claw or carapace.
"Think, Don't just brawl around," Damen forced himself to recall the simulations hoping that his training could help him win the fight.
The Deacon looked like a woman, but her movements carried the instincts of a Shadow Hound. That gave him an angle- something that he honed from the shadow hound fighting simulations.
When she lunged with her jaws snapping forth, Damen sidestepped and rolled into a somersault. He sprang upward, his claws slashing for her throat—
—but his aim slipped.
His strike tore into her chest instead of her neck.
"Dammit, I missed!" he spat, frustration flashing on his face.
The Deacon snarled and leapt backward.
She'd tested his strength, and she knew continuing a straight fight would only drag her into danger. Slowly, she raised one clawed hand—and conjured a weapon.
A long black staff appeared, its head crowned with a curved blade that shimmered with malevolent energy.
"What the hell is that?" Damen demanded.
Eryn's eyes widened in terror. "That's Annubis' Staff—be careful!"
"Be careful of what?!" he shouted back, but her warning came too late.
The Deacon slammed the staff into the ground.
A blinding surge of light erupted from its blade and shot straight at him. The heat crushed him before the beam even landed. His body froze in place, his muscles locked under its searing radiance.
"Damn it—I… I can't move!"
The blast struck as alien fire was engulfing him. Any normal human would've been vaporized instantly. But Damen remained standing, his body enduring even as flames ate at his flesh.
"This body… it can withstand even this," he gritted out.
His skin peeled, muscle smoked, and yet he still lived. But every second tore more from him. "I can't… take it much longer!"
Eryn's heart pounded as she watched helplessly from inside the shield. She was no fighter, but she was no fool either.
"Think. There has to be a way", she told herself.
The beam lit the chamber like day. In that blinding glare, she saw the Deacon clearly…and froze. Something in her beastly face, her presence, her very aura felt familiar.
Motherly.
"No, no—don't think about her, not now!" she hissed to herself, shaking her head.
She was thinking about her mother.
"Come on, if you've got any ideas, use them now!" Damen shouted through the roar of fire.
"I'm thinking!" Eryn screamed back, her mind racing.
Then her eyes widened. Her eyes kept drifting back to the creature, searching and analyzing. Until she saw a detail. A familiarity too sharp to ignore.
The deacon of Annubis wore an amulet.
She screamed—and the Deacon stopped. Just like that, her staff lowered, and the beam was cut off. Damen collapsed to the ground, smoking, and gasping.
"What… what the hell just happened? How'd you make her stop?" he coughed.
Eryn's voice broke as she shouted again, louder, and desperate:
"Mother… stop!"
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