Chapter 805: Let the hunt begin

La Rocha stared at Damon. For several long seconds, he did not say a word. Then he slowly took a step backward. "Master..."

"Hmm?"

"I suddenly find myself questioning the sincerity of the oath I just made."

Damon’s grin widened.

La Rocha rubbed his temples. "Random Gods? You want to travel through the cosmos, appear at the homes of completely unrelated Divine beings, and attempt to devour them? For no reason?"

"Why would there be no reason?" Damon looked genuinely confused. "They have Origin Energy."

La Rocha opened his mouth. "There is such a thing as karma. It is very dangerous to mess with fate lines. Gods are not like other beings. A single God could have potentially amassed an unimaginable amount of karma over millions of years. Worshippers, descendants, disciples, allies, enemies, entire civilizations... all of them become entangled with that God’s fate."

Damon raised a brow.

La Rocha continued seriously. "You kill that God, and those fate lines don’t simply disappear. You could slaughter some nameless God in the middle of nowhere today and discover ten thousand years later that you unknowingly killed the ancestor of an existence capable of erasing you with a thought."

"So?"

La Rocha stared at him. "So?!"

"Sounds like a problem for Damon ten thousand years from now."

"Master!"

"What? That bastard will be a lot stronger than me."

La Rocha momentarily found himself speechless. "Master, Gods are not livestock!"

"They are to me. You’re making this unnecessarily complicated. Find God. Kill God. Eat God. Get stronger. Repeat."

"..." La Rocha stared at him in silence.

"I need Origin Energy. Gods have Origin Energy. I need to learn how to fight Gods. We fight Gods. I need to understand my bloodline. We feed it Gods. If I get killed, then so be it. I am going to die anyways. A day or two sooner doesn’t matter."

On the plus side, he started counting on his fingers. "I get stronger. I get experience. We get loot. Maybe some Divine Techniques. Maybe some artifacts. Maybe I eat something interesting and unlock another ability."

Damon nodded approvingly at his own plan. "Very efficient."

La Rocha looked horrified. "That is your definition of efficiency?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Yes! We go to the trade hub, conceal ourselves, gather information, learn how your new powers work, determine your actual strength, and-"

"Ok. So are you going to find me something good to eat, or should I just use the method I have?"

La Rocha did not argue anymore. "Give me some time, Master. I have some connections with some networks, but finding a God’s exact location will not be easy."

"I understand." Damon nodded. "In the meantime..." A dangerous smile appeared on his face as he activated the same bloodline teleportation skill. "It is time to get out of this world."

Damon closed his eyes, and the familiar cluster of bloodline threads opened up. Before he went for the weak ones and hid behind numbers to make sure he wouldn’t be discovered. But this time it was going to be different.

He picked a stronger one. A bloodline so dense that it rivalled his own. The bloodline pulsed through the connection like a gigantic beating artery.

THUMP.

Damon actually felt the pulse inside his own body.

"Oh? My blood brother wants to meet me too, huh? This is going to be good."

He licked his fangs with a feral grin and then kicked off from the ground. The next second, the bloodline connection snapped taut.

BOOM!

Damon disappeared. Countless stars flashed past him. Worlds appeared and disappeared.

For an instant, Damon felt as though he were traveling through an enormous network of crimson veins spread across the entire cosmos. Millions of bloodline connections surrounded him, branching endlessly in every direction.

The feeling now was completely different from when he was merely a B-rank.

Back then, Damon had barely been able to perceive the individual bloodline threads. He had needed to concentrate just to distinguish one from another, and traveling through them had felt like throwing himself blindly into a raging river and hoping he came out somewhere useful.

But now, everything was painfully clear. Damon could see the bloodlines.

Not merely the threads connecting one devourer to another, but everything contained within them. He could see their strength, their purity, their age, and even the countless mutations accumulated over generations.

Some threads were thin and fragile, barely carrying a trace of the ancient bloodline. Others were thick and powerful. Several were so enormous that they looked less like threads and more like crimson rivers flowing through the darkness.

Damon’s eyes lit up. "Holy shit."

The network extended beyond what even his newly strengthened senses could perceive. Countless worlds contained beings carrying fragments of the same bloodline.

Some connections gathered together into enormous clusters, clearly representing worlds or civilizations where devourers existed in huge numbers. Others wandered alone through the void.

And there were several...

Damon narrowed his eyes.

...that made even his new body instinctively tense.

Those threads were ancient. As soon as he dared to reach for one of them, he instantly felt an immense pressure push back against his senses.

Damon immediately withdrew his consciousness. He reached toward another.

BOOM!

An even stronger pressure slammed into him. This time Damon felt something else mixed within it. It was cold, bottomless hunger.

For the briefest instant, Damon had the disturbing sensation that something unimaginably far away had turned its head and looked directly at him. He immediately released the thread.

"Fuck."

Damon shook it off and continued traveling along the connection he had already chosen. Compared to those monstrous threads, his target suddenly seemed considerably less intimidating. Still, it was powerful.

Strangely, the closer he got, the more excited his bloodline became. Damon grinned. It wanted whatever was waiting at the other end.

Countless worlds flashed past him. He had absolutely no idea how far he was traveling anymore. Galaxies disappeared behind him. Enormous spatial currents twisted around the crimson passage. It would take a while for him to get used to this.

Teleportation seemed like simple magic before, but now he could grasp the full complexity behind it. It wasn’t simply disappearing from one location and appearing at another. It was a lot more than that.

Then suddenly his speed slowed down and the bloodline connection thickened before disappearing. Damon found himself launched towards a world. He instinctively slowed himself.

"Oh..."

Calling it a world almost felt inadequate. It was massive. Far larger than Earth. Even from this distance, Damon could see several enormous continents scattered across deep blue oceans. Clouds swirled over mountain ranges that stretched thousands of kilometers, while enormous forests covered entire regions. More importantly, the entire world practically radiated energy.

Damon frowned. That was unexpected.

The bloodline he had followed was incredibly powerful. Whatever Devourer existed here should have consumed an astronomical amount of resources over its lifetime. Damon had half expected to arrive at some barren world stripped clean of everything valuable.

Instead, he had found the exact opposite. Life flourished everywhere. Mana currents flowed across the planet like enormous rivers. Some were so dense that Damon could actually see them with his divine senses. Even the oceans radiated more energy than entire regions of Earth.

"Interesting." Damon extended his senses.

BOOM!

The entire world unfolded inside his consciousness. Countless creatures appeared.

Cities. Kingdoms. Monsters. Cultivators. Hidden formations. Ancient ruins buried beneath mountains. Even several sealed spaces that his old senses would never have noticed.

Damon ignored all of them. His attention remained locked onto that single crimson connection. It descended toward one of the largest continents, to be more specific underneath it.

Damon followed.

WHOOSH!

His body plunged into the atmosphere. Flames erupted around him, but they couldn’t even touch his skin. Damon continued falling until something suddenly exploded upwards to meet him.

An entire continent trembled as something unimaginably huge tore through the earth. Mountain ranges shattered. Forests disappeared beneath waves of displaced stone. A crack thousands of kilometers long ripped across the land as a colossal crimson head emerged from beneath it.

Damon stopped falling. His eyes widened.

The creature continued rising. First came the head. Then the neck. Then more neck and more.

It was a freaking dragon! A huge ass dragon!

Damon slowly looked upward as the creature uncoiled itself from beneath the continent. What he had mistaken for underground mountain ranges were actually portions of its body buried beneath the earth.

Two enormous horns curved backward from its skull. Purple scales covered its body and between those scales ran thin golden lines.

THUMP!

Damon’s bloodline answered.

THUMP!

The dragon’s eyes opened. They were enormous crimson suns. Its gaze immediately locked onto Damon.

Damon had arrived expecting another Devourer. He had not expected the fucking Devourer to be the size of a continent and a dragon at that.

The dragon opened its mouth. Rows upon rows of enormous fangs appeared, and the surrounding mana instantly began rushing toward it.

Damon felt the atmosphere itself being pulled away. Clouds stretched into thin streams. Rivers rose from the ground. Trees, rocks, monsters, even several distant mountains began lifting into the sky. Everything was being dragged toward that mouth.

So that was how this world remained so rich in energy. This bastard wasn’t mindlessly devouring everything around it. It was controlling what it consumed. Or rather it was grooming the world before consuming it.

However, two can play at that game.

Damon’s blood boiled with excitement. Just the sheer presence of the dragon radiated immense pressure but he was different now. He was no longer the same Damon who had nearly died from a mutated draconic beast.

The dragon wanted to devour him?

Fine.

Damon wanted to devour it too. His lips stretched into a grin. "Come on then."