Chapter 722

Chapter 722: The Second Beating

The huge demon with twelve symmetrical limbs and a human face finally walked away. Under the high, distant Starry Sky and the dome, her back slowly twisted and melted into the chaos far away. In the place she had occupied, there were only piles of pitch-black bones and flesh that were slowly breaking apart and drifting upward, and dozens of badly wounded “native creatures” who were struggling to recover their strength.

Several Abyssal Hounds struggled up from the heaps of bones, the plates of bone on their bodies already broken and incomplete. Death-Omen Birds circled above those lifeless remains, searching for anything useful that could help them regain their strength. The huge spiked skull slowly dropped onto the ground not far away, its dark red, hollow eye sockets staring at the demons on the plain.

After the higher-ranking demon left, a fragile and dangerous balance formed among the remaining Abyssal demons here, but this brief balance was about to be broken.

As their shared fear faded, the instincts for fighting and destroying rose again. Among the Abyssal Deep of the Deep Sea, mutual killing and devouring was the eternal rule, especially when “food” was everywhere and every demon needed to heal as fast as possible.

The Abyssal Hounds that were digging through the bones for usable plates were the first to let out hostile growls at the Death-Omen Birds circling in the sky. Right after that, Smokewisp Jellyfish floated up from the shadows, their curved, wicked tentacles quietly stretching toward the nearby Fear Demons. The black skull also slowly lifted off the ground, its jaw opening bit by bit while dangerous energy stirred inside…

Even though a moment ago they had all been pinned to the ground and ground down by that powerful, strange “outsider demon”, it still could not stop these Abyssal demons from once again falling into mutual slaughter.

But just as the melee was about to begin, an extra sound suddenly came from not far away and at once stopped the demons in their tracks.

The pitch-black skull sensed the intruder’s presence first. It shot upward and turned its head toward the direction of the sound.

A huge shadow was staggering across the plain. It seemed to have popped out of the air out of nowhere, its swelling, writhing darkness outlining a shape that kept changing.

The scene looked like those “newborn demons” that had just emerged from the limbs of a Abyssal Deep lord. They often appeared in this formless, chaotic way. Only after a time of devouring and merging would this formless “demon mass” collapse and condense into a specific kind of demon.

However, this uninvited guest on the wasteland was clearly not a “newborn demon”. For a shapeless demon mass, the aura it gave off was far too dangerous… and strange.

Their sense of danger made all the Abyssal demons present instantly drop the urge to fight each other. By instinct, they focused their guard on that constantly swelling, writhing shadow.

Inside that mass of shadow, a solid shape slowly appeared. It was… a Abyssal Hound built from countless floating broken bones, its body almost twice the size of its kind.

Dog felt that it had had a very, very long dream.

It could no longer remember what had happened in the dream, but it remembered that it had gone to a very, very faraway place. There it had met some people, some friends. It had lived among a group of weak yet orderly beings and had spent a long time learning a set of “rules for survival”.

And a similarly weak… creature had always stayed by its side.

…Right. Where had that little weak creature gone?

Dog slowly raised its head. Its foggy vision seemed to be covered by a heavy Veil. Everything it saw looked twisted and layered. This place… looked a bit familiar, but Dog felt it had not been back here for a very long time.

Dog felt that it did not like this place—it liked much more the place where it had lived with that “little creature”, a place lit by sunlight.

In the hazy mist and the Veil, many vague shapes gathered around. Low roars and whispers came from all directions, distant and blurred. They sounded like threats, like malice.

Dog tried hard to open its eyes wide to see what those shadows that were growling at it really looked like, but it still could not see clearly. Little by little, though, it felt something else.

That feeling came from itself—hunger.

Dog was hungry, very, very hungry, as if it had not eaten for a century and had suddenly come to a place… rich with food.

Driven by that hunger, its muddled mind finally began to recall some impressions related to that long “dream”.

It remembered that little weak creature. Dog remembered that it had kept that little one company through many long winter nights. When the weather was very cold, they wrapped themselves in blankets and hid in the house together…

They shared the hot soup from a kind neighbor. Dog only drank one mouthful each time…

They learned together how to survive in that huge city-state, how to understand the kindness and malice in people’s hearts, and how to tell which things in the trash cans were useful and which were dangerous…

Begging, tricks, factories, chimneys, stealing, getting beaten, charity soup, working hard, eating their fill, crying together, laughing together, together…

…living.

In the layered blur of the Veil, those snarls full of threat and hostility rose and fell, growing more and more restless. Then a swift shadow suddenly rushed over from some direction and launched a fierce attack at Dog.

Dog felt something bite into its body—it hurt a little.

Inside the swelling, writhing shadows, Dog’s skull lowered its gaze. Deep in its hollow eye sockets, a faint green light flickered on and off as it looked, with a hint of curiosity, at the thing biting into its body.

A Abyssal Hound—it looked like one of its own kind.

Dog’s body quickly took shape in the shadows and black mist. Strange bone pieces stretched out from its joints, helping it regain the proper form of a Abyssal Hound. It looked at that “same kind” that was tearing at its body and, after a few seconds, finally spoke in a somewhat rusty voice: “Have you seen a human? She is my friend.”

The Abyssal Hound that was tearing at Dog’s body suddenly stopped in hesitation. It was not because it had understood Dog’s question—it did not yet have that kind of mind.

It had only sensed a huge danger. Deep inside Dog’s eye sockets, where a dim green light burned, there hid a very familiar, terrifying aura.

This Abyssal Hound finally reacted, but it was already too late. It had only just opened its jaws when, in the next second, all the bones on Dog’s body suddenly shattered and changed shape. Countless black bones exploded outward, wrapping around the attacker like a whirlwind, and in the blink of an eye regrouped outside the other’s body into Dog’s form again.

Using the mouth to eat was inefficient. Swallowing the whole thing at once was much more efficient.

The reckless attacker vanished. Only Dog’s tall figure remained in place. The black bones at Dog’s torso squeezed and writhed fiercely. From inside came the grinding and crunching of bones, along with the violent struggle and low, muffled snarls of the “food”. But after only a few seconds, the struggle and snarls slowly faded, leaving only the noise of bones grinding against each other.

The hunger eased.

Dog raised its head, sensing its strength slowly returning.

“Demons… taste good…”

The feast had begun.

Amid the roars and rambling cries of countless demons, Dog’s figure suddenly turned into countless black bone fragments that burst apart and flew in all directions. They swept over the whole wasteland like a broken storm. The bones cut through everything within reach—whether the living demons, the dust rising from demon remains on the ground, the mud flowing over the earth, or even the rocks on the surface and those thorny thickets that looked like fossils. All of them were torn apart by this storm and turned into “food”.

Those Abyssal demons that refused to be devoured launched a futile counterattack. Their fierce resistance only helped fill Dog’s belly. Some demons that were better at telling danger from gain ran madly toward the end of the wasteland to escape that feeding storm. After paying the price of wounds and even losing parts of their bodies, only a dozen or so demons, badly hurt, fled to a place that was somewhat safer.

The storm lasted for who knew how long before it finally faded over the wasteland. From the storm, a huge figure then took shape, its whole body burning with dim green flame and trailing black smoke.

The hunger had gone. Dog raised its head and looked toward some place deeper in the wasteland. It faintly felt a familiar presence in the distance.

That seemed to be the “little creature” that had lived with it for a very long time.

After a few seconds of slow and muddled thought, Dog slowly turned its gaze and found a rather large demon remnant on the messy wasteland. It lowered its head, picked up that remnant in its mouth, and let out a vague murmur from its throat: “Shirley… I found food…”

It took big steps and ran toward the depths of the wasteland.

Among the wreckage and remains, the few surviving demons got up, trembling, and stared blankly into the distance.

They had survived two feasts—by luck, they had not become food, or at least had not been eaten clean.

And that trace of dim green light that had appeared in the feast was still deeply burned into the dull, confused minds of these demons.

That was fear, a kind of fear that was unconditionally stamped into the deepest logic of almost all Abyssal demons, strong enough to press down even on their chaotic instincts.

The huge skull demon, covered in spikes and black from top to bottom, floated in the air, wobbling. A full third of its body had been “gnawed” away by that storm just now, but it had still stubbornly survived. This monster, which seemed to be a bit “smarter” than normal demons, swayed a few times in the air, let out a vague mutter, and then slowly flew off into the distance.

But it suddenly stopped again.

This skull demon seemed to sense something. It jerked its head up and looked toward the dome of the Abyssal Deep above, where the frozen Starry Sky spread.

A streak of dim green fire like a shooting star was falling from the sky, dropping straight toward this wasteland!

Maybe the repeated shocks had simply been too much. At the instant that “shooting star” appeared, a hazy, chaotic “thought” actually rose in the dull, simple mind of the skull demon—

Ah, the third beating is here…