Sign In To The Body Of Chaos At The Start-Chapter 79: Breath of Space!

The battlefield was littered in corpses, if the writhing, dismembered limbs of Abyssal creatures could even be called that.

Guts, blood, bones, as far as the eye could see, it was gruesome, trauma inducing even. Damon stood in the center of it all, his breath ragged, his shoulders heaving.

Blood coated his armor, dripping off the edges of BloodReaper’s jagged, glowing blade. The earth beneath him was cracked and broken, scorched by elemental fury, corrupted essence, and the raw heat of combat.

His wings twitched, one half-torn, scorched at the edges by Abyssal fire. Claw marks ran down his right side, trailing smoke and seared flesh.

His tail hung limp, bruised from being slammed into one of the monstrous centipede-leviathans earlier. A particularly persistent Abyssal beast had managed to pierce through his torso with a spear-like limb before he crushed its head into pulp.

His mana reserves were dangerously low. Even in form, he felt the drag. The weight.

He had fought nearly thirty-four intelligent Abyssal monsters in the span of what felt like half a day. All of them were in the Forbidden Mage Realm.

A few were likely even stronger, monsters that barely flinched from spatial magic, monsters that regenerated even the strongest flame wounds. Monsters that adapted mid-battle.

And now he stood, his breaths shallow, as the crimson sky bled above him.

"This is insane. Crazy woman dropped me in Hell on steroids." Damon muttered as he scanned the surroundings with his narrowed pupils.

"I need shelter." He said, moving forward, or rather staggering forward, dragging one leg slightly behind him.

"This era really was built different." He muttered, pressing a hand to his ribs, muttering a curse as he felt the bone still misaligned. That spear from earlier had done more damage than expected.

His Eyes of Oblivion scanned the terrain, and in the distance, roughly three hundred meters northeast, he found it, half-obscured by shifting black mists and jagged outcroppings of obsidian: a cave.

Damon didn’t hesitate.

With effort, he blink-stepped toward it, nearly collapsing from the mana cost. A second blink nearly drove him unconscious, and so the rest of the journey, he stumbled, cloaking his presence as much as possible.

Eventually, he reached it.

Inside, the cave was cold and hollow, completely cut off from the ambient Abyssal energy.

Somehow, the interior was untouched, either a hidden pocket of time, or perhaps a remnant zone protected by the wills of ancient beings. The space within felt... separate.

He scanned it thoroughly, layers of analysis from his Eyes of Oblivion flickering through his vision.

No Abyssal taint. No soul signatures.

Safe.

He collapsed onto the cold floor with a grunt and finally deactivated .

A long, pained exhale escaped his lips. Horns, wings, tail, all receded. His body, while powerful, now bore the full brunt of everything it had endured. His skin was torn in places, mana pathways cracked. His left shoulder was close to being dislocated.

"...Right."

He reached into his Eternal Storage Ring and willed it to reveal a small bundle wrapped in silken silver cloth, one of his Sign-In Rewards from over a year ago.

"Let’s hope this one was a good pull."

He opened it. Inside were three potion vials. Two glowing with deep azure blue, and the third radiating soft golden light.

Two healing potions, and one Mana regeneration potion.

"... Jackpot."

He uncorked the golden one first. The moment he drank it, his body began to radiate warmth. Torn muscle stitched together. Bone reformed. The bruise on his lung vanished within seconds. The searing ache of mana overuse dulled into a tolerable throb.

Then came the blue vial.

The moment it entered his system, his core lit up like a star. Aether surged through his circuits, reigniting spells, refreshing his depleted meridians. The swirling vortex in his dantian spun again, fully rejuvenated.

Finally, the silver elixir restored his Spirit Energy, stabilizing the bridge between him and Ezreal, though his World Spirits were still out of reach due to Talia’s interference.

"Good enough," he muttered.

He sat back against the cold stone, taking a deep breath. For a few minutes, he let the silence settle. It was the first moment since arriving here that he wasn’t fighting for his life.

That silence, however, didn’t last long. His mind immediately moved to the next problem, he needed to find civilization, or at least some kind of bastion, neutral zone, or something of that manner.

So far, he hadn’t even seen a city, or anything resembling it. Only battlefields. Only carnage.

"Think... Think..."

Then it hit him.

The Law of Space Rune.

One of the most mysterious and difficult forces to comprehend, but Damon had only just been gifted the room.

He hadn’t had time to explore it before Talia sent him here, but now, if he could master even a fragment of that law, perhaps he could stretch his perception across space and detect settlements, maybe even teleport if it came to that.

He reached into his ring again and pulled out the Rune. Upon it was inscribed a constantly shifting Space Law Rune, runic lines spiraling and folding in ways that defied the normal three-dimensional logic.

He laid it flat on the stone floor and sat cross-legged before it.

"Alright..."

His left palm hovered above the rune while his right began carving Spirit Seals into the air. The cave dimmed and the surrounding space began to compress.

His Eyes of Oblivion focused, peering into the runic folds, the shifting glyphs of the Space Law. Each rune segment vibrated with meaning. The rune itself was not meant to be read, it was meant to be felt. To be understood on a spiritual level.

Laws were at a higher level than simple Mana and Spells. They were the rules of which the world was built on. The Law of Space was literally the World’s Space Rules, and Damon comprehending this could allow him to manipulate or bend those rules to his whim.

He exhaled slowly and tapped into his Primordial Spirit Aether Body, drawing faint strands of Aether into his soulspace.

Aether... even here, in this war-torn era, was present. Faint. Unused.

His mind dived into the rune. Space ceased being "distance" and instead became frequency. Every meter, every inch, was a wavelength of existence.

The rune pulsed, revealing that what he thought was solid earth might in fact be an illusion governed by stabilized space.

Memories of training with spatial techniques flowed through his mind, blink steps, void displacement, dimensional slices.

But now, he sought extreme spacial detection. Not just in the surrounding area, but across insurmountable ranges.

To feel presence. To feel disturbance in the balance of distance and closeness.

Seconds passed....

Then minutes.....

Then hours.....

Sweat dotted Damon’s brow again, not from injury, but from mental exertion. His consciousness floated through an astral lattice of coordinates, bending around distant gravitational pull, space-folds, and ancient beacons left by long-dead civilizations.

And then, he felt it.

A ripple. It was extremely faint, on the edge of his expanded perception. Roughly two thousand kilometers west. A pulse of stabilized space. Regular, rhythmic. Almost like the heartbeat of a formation.

He could sense at least 4 people moving in a pack towards a specific location, they had their own vehicle as well, though it was under siege by monsters. It seemed as if they were transporting supplies.

"This is it." Damon said.

He closed the rune disc and stored it, rising to his feet. His mana now felt stable. His wounds were closed. His energy was full.

He’d killed three dozen Abyssal horrors. He’d taken on monsters that adapted and evolved mid-battle.

But now... the real hunt would begin. He picked up BloodReaper and let the blade form into a sleek scythe again, twin black feathers sprouting along its spine.

The Space Art he’d learned wasn’t battle-ready yet, but it would allow him to avoid ambushes, feel distortions, and maybe even predict teleportation rifts.

He stepped to the edge of the cave and gazed out. Now he had direction. Two thousand kilometers, that was it.

***

The sound of collapsing stone and screams echoed across the blackened plains, drawing the attention of every predator in a five-mile radius.

Four figures ran desperately through the ravaged canyon trail, surrounded by scorched cliffs and cursed forests of bone-like trees. Their vehicle a half-floating transport powered by ancient runes, had long since been destroyed.

Now, they were dragging their supplies by hand, each of them covered in blood, soot, and open wounds.

"Keep moving!" barked a man with gray-streaked black hair, his arm dangling uselessly by his side, soaked in crimson, "They’re flanking from the south!"

"My Mana reserves are nearly gone,!" gasped an elf woman, her emerald eyes wild with panic, her bow nearly cracked down the middle.

The group had started the day with ten members. Now, there were four.

Two humans. Two elves.

And at least eight Abyssal creatures on their tail, six-legged beasts with elongated, razor-lined skulls, their bodies wrapped in shifting, ethereal darkness.

They were lesser Abyssal horrors, but they were still intelligent, and unlike the mortals they hunted, they never tired.

~KRAAAAAHHHHH!!!~

One of the beasts leapt through the air, aiming for the second elf, a younger male no older than twenty.

The woman screamed, hurling herself into him, rolling them both aside just as the creature’s jagged claws struck the stone where his head had been.

But she wasn’t fast enough to dodge entirely.

Claws raked her back.

She cried out, blood spraying across the cracked terrain.

"Lira!" the boy shouted, grabbing her and activating a small personal barrier with what little mana he had left.

The creature shrieked and circled, regrouping with the others, who now fanned out like wolves preparing to feast.

"We can’t... we can’t keep this up," the older man muttered, coughing blood. "This was supposed to be a quick delivery run..."

The other human, a tall, grim-faced woman with twin daggers in hand, didn’t answer. Her eyes darted toward the supply crate they’d been dragging, a gleaming white container sealed with runes.

Inside it was food. Medicine. Spirit Crystals.

For a nearby refuge... their home.

They couldn’t afford to die here.

But they were going to.

The boy’s arms trembled as he tried to lift the bow from Lira’s hands. She weakly shoved him.

"Stay down," she hissed.

"But you’re, "

"I said stay down."

The monsters slowly approached, their claws clicking, tails twitching with anticipation. Abyssal mist trailed their movements, melting the stone beneath them with every step.

A growl. Then another leap.

The tall woman moved first, throwing her daggers with precise strikes, one embedding in the monster’s throat, the other bouncing off a hardened scale. It screamed but didn’t fall. It only got angrier.

"Come on, you bastards!" she shouted.

The others stood back-to-back, weapons raised, even as their limbs trembled and mana ran dry.

And then

The sky... pulsed.

The monsters stopped.

Every single one of them.

Their heads turned skyward, as if something, or someone, had entered their senses.

The air went heavy. Crushed.

Like reality itself recoiled.

And then,

~BOOM!~

A crack of thunder, but not from above, from space itself, rupturing like glass.

A tear opened in mid-air, and through it descended a figure wreathed in crimson and shadow.

His wings extended like the wrath of fallen stars, horns glowing faintly with internal flame. In his hand was a black scythe taller than a man, its edge singing with layered chaos energy and the silence of death itself.

His arrival split the battlefield and before Damon could even speak, the monsters lunched at him venomously, ignoring the others.

The monsters knew, without stopping him, their actions were irrelevant. However, before they arrived at him, Damon moved quickly like a blur.

~SLASH!~

One Abyssal creature was cut in half before it even registered him. The second one, he grabbed by the mouth and crushed with a twisting torque of his arm, snapping bone and sinew.

A third opened its maw to scream, but a black-red arc cleaved through it and the cliff behind it, sending molten rock raining down.

Damon’s Eyes of Oblivion flared, his killing intent sweeping the canyon like a tidal wave. It was suffocating. All-consuming. Damon blinked across space in three rapid flashes, each step a death sentence.

One-by-one, the remaining horrors fell, their bodies bisected, shattered, or burnt to ash by chaotic draconic flame. The battle was over before it had begun.

The four survivors stared in stunned silence, unable to believe what they’d seen.

Damon stood there, scythe dripping dark ichor, his expression unreadable. His eyes briefly flicked to the group, analyzing, assessing.

None of them posed a threat.

He began to walk toward them.

The younger elf flinched.

The older man raised a shaky sword.

"W-Who are you...?"

Damon didn’t answer at first. His gaze flicked to the supply crate behind them, then back to the group.

"You four were heading west," he finally said.

It wasn’t a question.

The grim woman nodded warily. "T-Toward Bastion Sanctum. A neutral fortress built near the Black Hollow Valley."

"How far?"

"About sixteen hundred kilometers... from here."

Damon nodded.

"I’ll be escorting you," he said simply, "You’ll get me inside the fortress. I need somewhere to rest."

The elf woman looked at him with suspicion, "And why should we trust?"

"Because without me, you die in the next five minutes," he cut her off flatly, then pointed to the bleeding tear in the sky above, "More are coming. Bigger ones. You’ve got about thirty seconds before they catch your scent."

All of them froze.

The woman grit her teeth. "...Fine."

Damon turned, his wings folding behind him.

"Form a line. Keep the supplies close. Don’t waste mana. I’ll handle the path."

He paused, his gaze briefly scanning Lira’s injuries. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed a small vial of green-gold liquid toward the boy beside her.

"A healing potion. Premium variant."

The boy fumbled but caught it, eyes wide.

"Use it well," Damon said.

And then, with energy building around him, he took to the skies above them like a comet, scanning the horizon.

Behind him, the four survivors gathered, silent, overwhelmed and finally, one of them broke the silence with a whisper,

"Who the hell was that?" freeweɓnøvel~com

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