Chapter 29: The Sovereign's Path
The silence of the ruined dungeon was broken only by the crackle of lingering energy. Damon stood over the spot where Oscar had vanished, feeling a new weight in his soul—not a stolen one, but a power he had forged in the heat of a life-or-death struggle. By observing Oscar's destruction and countering it with his own rifts, Damon had unlocked a deeper understanding of reality's laws.
Lucius approached, bowing lower than ever before, and spoke with newfound reverence. He warned Damon that while Oscar was the Pillar of the South, the world had felt his pulse and the other six Demon Lords would not sit idly by. During their briefing, Lucius revealed the hierarchy of the Abyss, explaining that each remaining Lord governed a fundamental force like Gravity, Time, Matter, or Spirit. They would see Damon's independence as a virus and form an alliance to prune him from existence.
Damon realized that raw power was no longer enough; he needed to be the master of his own domain. To protect Saya, he had to be more than strong—he had to be unmatchable. However, he refused to involve Saya in the violence of his training. He had fought too hard to bring her back, and he intended for her to remain in the light while he mastered the darkness. Turning solely to Lucius as his guide, Damon utilized his Dimensional Rift to transcend the boundaries of their own world. He discovered he could now explore dungeons from other universes, tapping into alien magic and ancient technologies that no Demon Lord in his own realm could even fathom.
Using these multiversal rifts, he carved a piece of reality away to create the Void Sanctuary. Inside this pocket of space, time flowed differently, allowing him to undergo grueling training that would have crushed a normal man. He practiced folding space so tightly that it created a Calamity effect, mastering the physics of his own rifts to develop the Event Horizon. This passive field acted as a 360-degree shield of spatial distortion, disintegrating any hostile mana or physical object before it could touch his skin. He also mastered the Void Step, granting him the ability to exist in the space between spaces, making him untouchable by conventional attacks.
As the days inside the Sanctuary stretched into years, Damon's body underwent a Sovereign Evolution. His physical heart gave one final, heavy thud and stopped, replaced by the Void Heart—a crystalline core of violet energy that made him immune to conventional death or heart-piercing attacks. He synthesized his mastery into a terrifying new ability called Calamity Warp, allowing him to warp an enemy's internal organs into a different dimension with a mere glance.
"I'm not just a warrior anymore," Damon whispered, his eyes flaring with a permanent violet glow. "I am the wall that the Abyss will break against." As the training concluded, a massive tremor shook the Sanctuary. Outside the rift, the first of the Demon Lord Alliance had arrived at the dungeon's entrance. Damon turned to Lucius with a calm, terrifying smile, ready to test his new limits while Saya remained safely hidden within his protective domain.now he can access any world dungeon to become stronger.
To be continued...