Chapter 164: Sympathetic Priest.

The Divine Priest seemed stunned, then realization quickly hit it.

"That has nothing to do with us, the bodies were all gone by the time we came back."

Damien sighed with an exaggerated stretch, his bones making popping sounds as his arms coincidentally reached out towards the undead priest.

Then he grabbed his ritual staff and struck the Divine Priest across the face, small white bony objects flew out of its mouth as it screeched in pain.

The Divine Priest stumbled sideways, clutching its face as it tried to understand what had just happened. Damien didn’t look particularly angry, which somehow made the attack feel worse. He had simply heard an answer he didn’t like and decided that hitting it was faster than arguing with it.

Damien admired the runes around the ritual staff, he wasn’t sure what it was made of, or who made it. But he still hadn’t met a force the runes of his ritual staff couldn’t damage.

Just looking at the shattered scales around the Divine Priest’s cheeks gave him a deep sense of satisfaction.

He briefly wondered whether the staff had some sort of special effect against the Divine Priest’s body or whether it was simply ridiculously durable. Either way, Damien wasn’t complaining. The staff had already proven itself useful several times, and unlike many of the strange treasures he had encountered, it didn’t require him to understand everything about it before he could enjoy using it.

Damien intentionally strengthened his back to look more imposing.

"This is your last chance Blue Blue."

The Divine Priest growled darkly.

"You didn’t even bother adding anything else this time and just said Blue twice."

Damien’s eyes snapped downwards.

"What was that?"

The Divine Priest quickly shook its head, which made Damien smile in satisfaction. He actually heard the Divine Priest, after all. He was no ordinary human, he just wanted to grind away the Divine Priest’s remaining pride.

The creature had been arrogant when they first met, throwing around grand titles and speaking as though it had already conquered everything worth conquering. Now it was reduced to complaining about Damien’s terrible nicknames while standing in front of an army of undead.

Damien coughed darkly, then continued.

"Tell me what you know, who did you see? The human bodies were certainly moved, I need to know by whom."

The Divine Priest hesitated.

Its eyes moved towards the battlefield, then back towards Damien. There was clearly something it was trying to remember, but Damien didn’t give it much time.

The Divine Priest looked pitiful to the Eidolon Priest. It even felt slight sympathy for it, so it decided to sit back down and watch as Damien once more smacked the Divine Priest across the face.

"Who took the bodies? Where are they?"

Damien asked in succession while smacking the Divine Priest, soon tears were streaming down the Divine Priest’s cheeks. It opened its mouth to speak, but only muffled sounds came out.

The new Eidolon Priest watched quietly, its expression becoming increasingly strange. It had only recently gained enough intelligence to properly understand what was happening around it, and even it could tell that the Divine Priest’s situation was getting worse with every passing second.

It had surrendered immediately when it realized the difference in strength between itself and Damien. Looking at the Divine Priest now, it felt increasingly confident that it had made the correct decision.

Damien brought the ritual staff to a halt.

"Oh, you don’t have teeth anymore."

The Divine Priest stared at him with watery eyes, its mouth hanging slightly open as it tried to speak. The creature had clearly reached the point where whatever answer it wanted to give Damien was trapped behind injuries that made speaking difficult.

Seeing Damien finally stop gave the Divine Priest more relief than a feast of fresh human meat, but then Damien’s next words sent a chill down its spine.

"Oh, you’re already healing. That’s perfect, we will continue shortly then."

The Divine Priest’s eyes widened. It frantically waved its hands about, trying to draw Damien’s attention towards it, but Damien wasn’t interested.

The Divine Priest became increasingly desperate, then finally, its scales lit up brightly, and its teeth began to grow back at a feasible pace.

Damien smirked darkly and finally came to a stop.

"Wait." The Divine Priest began speaking before all its teeth even finished growing. "I was certainly speaking the truth when I said they were gone before we got here, but..."

The Divine Priest vomited a mouthful of blood, it wiped its mouth and continued despite the pain.

"But I saw something. I saw space moving as if it carried weight."

Smack.

Damien brought his staff down again, his expression cold as ice. "Of course space is carrying weight, how stupid do you think I am?"

The Divine Priest’s eyes widened in disbelief.

"No." It quickly responded before Damien decided to strike it again. "I meant space was moving as if something was forcing its way through it, similar to those humans that can shift space."

Damien finally understood.

The Divine Priest was trying to describe a space master, but that didn’t narrow things down nearly as much as he would have liked. There were quite a few space masters within the camp, and there was still a possibility it was a creature with space-based abilities, similar to his Therizon.

Damien’s expression became thoughtful.

He had already seen how strange space-related abilities could be. Therizon could swim through space, disappear into it, and emerge somewhere else entirely, while some humans possessed abilities that could manipulate or shift space in different ways. There was no reason to assume every space-related ability worked the same way.

"So you didn’t actually see who took them?"

The Divine Priest shook its head. "No. I only saw the space."

That wasn’t particularly useful.

He had been hoping the Divine Priest would give him a name, a face, or at least something recognizable. Instead, all he had received was a vague description of something moving through space. Still, it was better than nothing.

"Undead Lich".