A few minutes back, as Damien was watching the battle, he felt a sudden aura fluctuation in the distance.
It was subtle, almost imperceptible. It traveled in such a strange pattern that nobody else could notice it, but that pattern led straight to Damien.
This was obviously a summon.
No, rather, he was being alerted of that person's presence.
Damien was a naturally curious person, and on top of that, he didn't necessarily be present at the battlefield. His people were more than capable of taking care of this situation themselves. The corruption was guaranteed to not spread too far.
With nothing holding him back, Damien took the opportunity to investigate the incoming aura.
His search led him tens of millions of kilometers to the west. Not just that, he found himself descending into the earth through a ravine and finding a cave hidden deep within it before he started to feel the aura strongly enough to indicate its closeness.
There, hundreds of kilometers below the surface, Damien traveled through a cave for another few hundred meters before he found its end.
Along with the source of the aura.
"..."
Damien didn't say anything. He had to take a second to process what he was seeing before speaking.
'Is this even a living being?'
Damien thought Rein was beaten up when he found him, but the being in front of him was in a much worse state.
To start with, he only had the top half of his body. That top half was a sack of bones just barely held together by skin and muscle that had worn away with time. His head was like a sunken skull, his eyes just barely dots of light left in the abyss they represented.
And those eyes were staring right at Damien, emitting the aura of someone far stronger than a man who was left like this.
"You...are not him."
Those were the first words the man said to Damien.
"Not him. Not him. Not him. Not him."
The man clutched his head in his arms and rocked back and forth. His torso wasn't equipped for so much movement, causing him to fall over as he continued to chant the same two words.
"Not him. Not him. Not him. Not him."
Damien didn't know what to think.
Whatever he expected to find here, it wasn't this.
The aura he felt wasn't inherently hostile, but it had something evil about it. He investigated because he thought it was his enemies hiding in wait, but he was completely wrong.
This being had the strength of a God, according to the aura he gave off, but his mind was obviously not all the way present.
Combined with the state of his body, Damien wondered how this man managed to continue living for so long.
The man completely ignored Damien after that first sentence. It was as if he'd genuinely forgotten everything outside himself.
And those last words he said...
'I'm...not him?'
The man's aura was obviously calling Damien here.
So when the time came to actually put those forces into motion...
'...can't I just will it?'
Damien knew what his intent was.
And as long as he knew his intent, his mana would know it too.
He allowed it to flow as it desired, leaving his palm and entering the ill man's body through his seven orifices.
"...!"
The man's chanting came to a halt. His hollow eyes widened along with his mouth, and his hands went to his throat.
Strange sounds exited his throat, almost like he was choking, but more like something was forcefully crawling up his esophagus.
The blackness in his eyes slowly faded, leaving room for his pure white sclera and bright green irises to shine as his eyes bulged out of his head.
It was a gruesome scene, but Damien watched with interest the entire time.
He could feel his mana working.
It went into the man's mind and began changing things, and not only that, it entered his body and swirled as if it was being circulated.
That was the cause of the man's suffocation.
Something Damien didn't realize the existence of was being pushed out of his body.
And as his mind became clearer and clearer, and as the visage of the man before him became clearer too, the man's eyes welled up with tears.
"Ah...ah...!"
He prostrated himself on the ground.
His body shook demonically.
His head jerked, and heaps of bloody red liquid and a slug-like black substance were vomited out of his mouth.
The disgusting substances wiggled on the floor like they were alive. It wasn't just one of two of them, but hundreds that eventually exited the man's body as minutes passed.
It took a very long time for the process to come to an end. Far longer than Damien was ever expecting.
But, eventually, the shriveled-up half of a man that he saw when he first entered the cave finally gained some life.
His blueish-purple skin returned to its original bronze color, and his muscles gained a little bit of vitality, just barely growing enough for him to somewhat function.
"You...are not him."
The first sentence the man said was the same one from before. Damien almost thought he failed.
However...
"You are not him, but..."
The man's face was still streaming with tears. His body was still prostrated on the ground.
"....who...are you?"
He asked another question.
One that meant far more than what it seemed on the surface.