Chapter 113: Damascus’ Descent [2]
The sky above the Hudeii Desert did not simply darken.
It decayed.
"Blessed art thou O Great Eternal One"
"Thy name, Damascus, shall make the world bleed"
"You are the Great Tyrant of the Unfortunate"
"You are the God of Misfortune"
"You are the herald of death"
The moment the final syllable of the ancient Lydorian incantation left the Troll King’s lips.
The crimson lines of the sacrificial array didn’t just glow.
They violently ruptured.
A grotesque, sickeningly dense wave of divine energy began leaking from the subterranean depths of the Grand Sanctum.
It bled outward in physical, pulsing ripples of bruised purple and dried-blood red, tearing through the stone foundations and spilling across the sands.
As this raw divinity escaped, a massive phantom veil surged from the epicenter of Norona City, expanding across the horizon at a terrifying velocity.
It resembled a colossal, translucent dome of distorted space, weaving itself over the entirety of the Hudeii Desert.
This veil acted as a cosmic blackout zone.
The moment it sealed, it completely severed the desert from the spiritual radar of the outside world, effectively blocking the notice of other gods and the watchful eyes of the ten continents.
To the rest of the world, the Hudeii Desert had simply ceased to exist in the ethereal fabric of reality.
Within the ritual chamber, the sheer hunger of the activation manifested.
Hundreds of corpses—the dried beastmen, the shattered trolls—began vanishing every single second.
They didn’t rot or crumble; they were systematically erased from existence, dissolved into raw, microscopic particles as the ritual devoured their physical matter to bridge the gap between realms.
Outside, across the shifting dunes, the living who were close to the perimeter of the destroyed city suddenly clutched their heads.
The air pressure became a physical weight, carrying a maddening, multi-layered chorus of discordant whispers that echoed directly inside the minds of the survivors.
The voices spoke of loss, of decay, of an inescapable, creeping doom.
An overwhelming, primal fear settled over the entire battlefield.
"What is this?" Eurenia shrieked, staggering back in fear. "What in the hell is going on??"
"Arrgghh" Alisa bit her lips, suppressing the voices from eroding her memories, corrupting her.
High Priest Croak groaned, he fell back, forced to his knees....the pressure unleashed was something beyond his comprehension.
"This is divinity" Croak’s eyebrows furrowed, "We need to contact the Apostle at once!" he screamed.
No one could muster the strength to move.
They were barely surviving thanks to this willpower, any slight mistake would result to their very end.
Even the apex powerhouses of Varania—the proud Dukes and Duchesses—felt their instincts screaming.
General Trojan, Grand Chancellor Manuses, Brenda, and Eurenia were forced to take several steps back.
Their specialized combat stances breaking as they found themselves completely unable to suppress or withstand this horrifying, alien divinity.
It was a tier of existence that made their mortal cultivation feel utterly insignificant.
Then, the true nature of the God of Misfortune manifested.
Those among the scattered survivors who weren’t blessed by Varanus, the God of Beasts, instantly succumbed to the spiritual pollution.
Their eyes rolled back, and they went entirely mad, clawing at their own faces and screaming incoherent blasphemies into the desert wind.
Simultaneously, reality itself began to warp under the weight of the entity’s passive aura; a series of bizarre, highly unfortunate events spiraled entirely beyond control.
Weapons spontaneously misfired or shattered in their sheaths; defensive mana barriers turned inward, suffocating their users.
And the very ground beneath the fleeing soldiers suddenly liquefied into treacherous sinkholes without warning.
High on the distant ridge, Roy watched the unfolding cosmic horror.
His powerful Wolf-man form remained utterly still, but his eyes narrowed to pin size as he absorbed the sheer, suffocating scale of the manifestation.
The pale, gold-flecked irises of his beast form focused entirely on the trembling phantom veil.
"It has finally begun," he whispered, his voice low, steady, and carrying a chilling undertone of absolute anticipation.
"I was expecting the Troll King would hasten the ritual but I never expected it would be this horrifying"
"Was the ritual perfected already? This massacre...."
"Did it became the final catalyst?" Countless thoughts flooded his mind as he watched from the distance.
***
The fabric of space within the cavern was trembling so violently that the obsidian walls were micro-fracturing like brittle glass.
The sheer, concentrated weight of the descending consciousness was so immense that even the four-meter frame of the Troll King Razarak was violently forced to his knees.
"Praise the Misfortune of Men" Razarak rasped.
"Praise the Father!" he felt his bones breaking down yet he showed no signs of pain, he was overwhelmed with joy.
The stone beneath his kneecaps shattered.
He gasped desperately for air, his lungs feeling as though they were filled with molten iron, his legendary Martial Lord resilience reduced to nothing more than a fragile shell.
Before him, the unconscious human lying on the grand stone table suddenly stiffened.
The human’s muscles violently twitched and flexed.
The veins beneath the pale skin bulging and glowing with an unnatural, toxic crimson light.
High above the altar, the thousands of corpses that had been devoured by the divinity were fully processed.
They transformed into a dense, swirling vortex of pure, unadulterated divine essence.
Like a localized typhoon, this terrifying energy cascaded downward, forcefully flowing directly into the pores and pathways of the human body.
The vessel groaned, its bones snapping and reforming under the sheer density of the cosmic influx.
Then, space cracked.
A jagged, horizontal rift tore open across the empty air directly above the stone table. But what lay within the void was not darkness.
Through the divine tear, thousands of unblinking, crimson eyes spread across the distorted space, their pupils burning with a malicious, ancient intelligence.
Every single eye turned simultaneously, locking their focus entirely on the twitching, unconscious human body below.
The connection was locked.
The anchor was secure.
Damascus’s gaze had officially been set upon the Hudeii Desert.