Sign In To The Body Of Chaos At The Start-Chapter 84: Escape!

The battlefield was still steaming with the reside of slaughter as chunks of abyssal flesh was laying strewn across cracked stone, slowly fading into withering wisps of corruption.

Broken armor, torn banners and blackened marks also scattered across the room, while injured men and women huddled together, quickly working to get themselves healed up before another ambush occurs.

The crater Damon had left behind still pulsed with residual energy, each flicker of space bending unnaturally before fading back to stability.

The silence that followed was very unnatural. It still felt as if everyone was caught in shock from being betrayed by someone they had worked with for so long, and the sight of Damon absolutely destroying the Abyss.

As the unsettling silence continued on, Captain Bren finally decided to put an end to it, taking charge of the situation, "Everyone," he called out, his voice rough from shouting but firm with authority.

"That’s as far as we go in this mine." He said.

He didn’t need to repeat himself.

The soldiers and specialists who had survived looked up in exhaustion.

They knew this wasn’t a retreat from cowardice, it was survival, the risks of continuing to go forward were far too great, especially with their position exposed, there could be abyssal reinforcements on their way.

Bren turned, speaking louder this time so all could hear, "Gather anything useful. Crystal shards, reforged alloy, untainted mana cores. You’ve got ten minutes. The injured, try to heal yourself as much as possible. Then we’re leaving."

He turned back toward the ridge, where Damon stood silently, wings of shadow still barely flickering behind him.

A few of the wounded sat against the rocks, gulping down healing elixirs or being treated with makeshift spells. The spirits of fear that had gripped them earlier were replaced now with something different.

A grim respect and awe towards Damon, all still thinking back to how he saved them, the level of power he had displayed, it was incredible.

Bren himself made his way across the fractured ground, his boots crunching over bones and abyssal residue. He stopped when he reached Damon, who was crouched beside Ila’s unconscious form.

She was still bound tightly in ethereal chains, her once carefully concealed corruption now plainly visible for all to see. Even unconscious, the faint flicker of Abyssal mana twitched beneath her skin like a parasite too stubborn to die.

"I thought you were gonna just kill her once you came over here to be honest," Bren said, coming to stand beside him.

"She might still have answers," Damon replied, "And killing her would’ve been a mercy. People like this need to die gruesome deaths."

Bren nodded slowly, chewing the inside of his cheek. "Fair."

There was a pause between them, filled only by the quiet wind tugging at their cloaks and the distant murmurs of survivors sifting through debris.

"You want to know how I met her," Bren said suddenly.

Damon didn’t look up, but his silence was answer enough.

Bren leaned against a nearby stone, folding his arms. "About a year ago, before the outer ridges completely fell, we had a supply caravan get ambushed by spatial distortions. A group of scouts tried to map the damaged routes, and only two made it back."

He looked at Ila’s limp form.

"She was one of them."

Damon’s expression tightened.

"I thought she was lucky to survive. Smart too. She drew full three-dimensional models of the rift routes on the wall of the medical ward, even while half-conscious. The kind of spatial intellect that’s rarer than a phoenix feather."

"You took her in?" Damon asked.

"I vouched for her. Gave her a uniform. Gave her access." Bren’s jaw clenched. "Thought she’d be one of the reasons Bastion might last another month."

Damon looked at him now, gaze unreadable, "You blame yourself."

"I do."

"You shouldn’t."

Bren raised a brow, "You saw how many she got killed? I’ve lived for hundreds of years, I had a wife, friends, all of them are gone now, to the abyss, and I just realized I allowed one of their minions to kill more people."

"I did. And I also saw who finished the fight."

The grizzled captain laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "That ain’t the point, kid."

"No," Damon said, eyes flicking to Ila again, "But what is the point, Captain?"

Bren was quiet for a moment before he said, "The point is... I don’t know who I can trust anymore."

He exhaled, shaking his head.

"Ila wasn’t loud. She didn’t drink. She didn’t skip shifts. She pulled double-duty without complaint. Hell, half the formation updates we use now were derived from her field notes. She was a war hero by our standards."

"She was a patient mole," Damon said bluntly, "She made you trust her."

"She did," Bren replied, "But you? You didn’t."

"I didn’t trust anyone. Syllana told me to figure out who the mole was, all of you were in my sights." Damon said.

Bren gave him a look, "I can see that. I’m just wondering what that makes you. A good man? Or a dangerous one?"

Damon didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he turned his gaze to the horizon, where the rising sun began to break through the clouds. The golden light filtered across the crater, bathing the battlefield in a surreal glow, peaceful, despite the carnage.

Finally, Damon said, "If I have to be dangerous to protect the people who I care about... then I’ll be dangerous."

There was something terrifyingly sincere about the way he said it.

Not a threat. A promise.

Bren looked away first, "Damn. You sound like someone I once followed into the Abyss."

Damon stood, brushing off dust from his cloak, "And did that man survive?"

"No," Bren said, chuckling darkly, "But he gave the those Abyssal bastard of a headache before he went."

Damon nodded once. "Let’s hope I can do the same."

As the last of the survivors finished packing the few precious resources they could salvage, a young scout jogged over.

"Sir!" he saluted Bren, glancing warily at Damon, "We’re all ready to set out."

Bren waved him off, "Good. Let’s go."

The scout ran off, and the group quickly gathered their things and moved onwards.

****

They quickly started the return journey, with fortified crates containing salvaged mana crystals and precious alloy carried by the Spirit Beast carriers.

However, danger came quickly. They had been walking for no more than twenty minutes when the first pulse came. Damon froze mid-step.

It was faint, barely a shimmer, but to his senses, it was as clear as day. A distortion of space, a flicker of Abyssal scent—warped air tinged with the acidic tang of corrupted mana.

Behind him, Bren was in the middle of checking a mapping glyph when he noticed Damon had stopped.

"What is it?"

Damon didn’t answer. His flared to life, burning violet, scanning every speck of magic in the surrounding environment. His shadows surged forward without a command, snaking along the rocky terrain like wolves anticipating a storm.

Then he saw it.

A ripple.

No, five.

"Form up!" Damon’s voice cracked through the air like a whip.

The entire convoy reacted instantly, no longer frozen in fear like they were in the mines. They listened to him, shields raised, formation glyphs flared, and healers darted to the center to be protected and provide their help.

~SKREEEEE!~

The first creature emerged.

Long, segmented like a centipede, but with eyeless sockets and blades for limbs. Its body glistened with a coat of Abyssal gel that sizzled as it touched the air. It screeched again, and behind it, more shapes rippled into view.

Ten. No... twenty.

Winged horrors. Crawling aberrants. A new pack, smaller than the horde from the mines—but this time they weren’t random.

They were coordinated.

"Shit," Bren growled, stepping beside Damon, "They followed us."

"They knew where to find us," Damon confirmed grimly, "The signal Ila sent before we entered the mine, it’s still echoing. Subsurface trace."

"Can you stop it?"

"Not until I deal with these things."

BOOM!

One of the winged horrors slammed into the rear line, lifting a guard clean off his feet before Damon’s shadow stabbed through it from behind.

BloodReaper spun into his hand, extending with a screech of raw metal and energy. Damon stepped forward and whispered, "Shadow Domain."

The terrain darkened. The world around them turned monochrome for a second, shadows stretching unnaturally long. Then the monsters stepped into Damon’s realm.

And he was waiting for them.

The first creature lunged, Damon met it mid-leap, scythe flashing. One clean swipe bisected the monster. A second flick sent its twitching corpse flying into another.

Behind him, shadow soldiers emerged, ten, then fifty, each formed from dead Abyssals reborn into his command. Their eyes blazed purple, matching his.

Yet despite the overwhelming response, more kept coming.

The group fought with desperation. Bren crushed a horror with his earth hammer. Two guards slammed a spatial barrier together just in time to deflect a spined crawler’s acidic volley.

"Wards aren’t holding!" someone shouted.

"They’re adapting," Damon snarled. "These aren’t ordinary scouts, they’re bred for pursuit!"

He reached out, twisting his fingers midair.

[ Rift Severance ]

The space around one advancing horror fractured, warping its internal organs across five different planes before it dropped, convulsing.

"Bren," Damon called out, "Take the group down through that ridge. There’s an old Spirit Formation circle buried there. My shadows found it two days ago, it’ll give us a temporary suppression field."

"You’re not coming?"

"I’ll slow them down. If they all hit you together, we lose more people. Go!"

Bren hesitated only a second longer before nodding, "You heard him! MOVE!"

The survivors sprinted down the path, throwing suppression runes behind them to create mini-barriers. Damon remained where he was, eyes burning.

He reached into his ring and pulled out a small obsidian shard, pressing it into the ground. It flared once, an echo of Lilith’s inheritance, a rune of temporal delay.

Any creature stepping near it would find its movements slowed by half for ten seconds.

That would be enough.

The next wave hit him like a black tide.

Damon spun, BloodReaper singing through the air as he danced with death. Shadows lunged forward, intercepting some of the beasts while others bit and slashed, forcing him to backstep. A screech erupted from the side—one of the larger, four-legged monsters charged, pulsing with unstable magic.

Damon vanished and reappeared above it, diving the tip of his scythe into its skull.

~BOOM!~

Another explosion. Smoke and gore flew.

But then came the change. A shimmer in the distance. A new rift began to form.

Damon’s heart sank.

They weren’t just hunting him, they were trying to open a path. Reinforcements. Again.

He gritted his teeth. "Not this time."

He raced toward the forming rift. His wings surged open, shadows propelling him like a missile.

[Spatial Lockdown] slammed into place, four glyphs carved into the very air, suppressing dimensional flow.

But something pushed back.

A voice. Hissing. Whispering.

"You will not keep him... We see you... He waits for you..."

Damon’s jaw clenched. His scythe whirled upward, carving through the rift core itself.

"Shut Up Bitch!"

He slammed the weapon down.

[ Eclipse Rend ].

The sky pulsed black and the rift collapsed with a shriek, and the surviving Abyssals immediately fell into disarray, twitching and shrieking as if something was pulling them back.

They began to retreat. And just like that, silence returned again.

Damon stood amid dozens of corpses, panting slightly, shadows steaming off his back.

A voice came behind him, tired, wor, —but relieved.

"You’re a damned nightmare."

Bren.

Damon turned slowly, saw the group returning. The injured looked shaken but alive. The formation circle had held long enough for them to rest, and seeing the enemy retreat had brought them back.

"Was it another gate?" Bren asked.

Damon nodded, wiping blood from his cheek.

"And?"

"It’s shut. For now."

Bren exhaled, "You keep this up, and we’ll have to start calling you the Abyss Hunter or something."

Damon didn’t smile, but his voice held a faint warmth, "I’ve heard worse titles."

Bren clapped a hand on his shoulder, "Let’s go. We need to get Ila into an anti-Abyssal cell and warn Syllana."

"Agreed."

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