Damien's vision blurred.
And then it was replaced with sothing else. Focus.
He felt the stone behind him. Felt the angle. The sharpness.
And he smiled.
Damien surged forward into the demon's grip, ignoring the pain, wrapping both arms around its torso. The demon snarled in confusion as Damien lifted again—every ounce of essence roaring through his fra.
They left the ground.
Damien twisted mid-air, redirecting their montum, and slamd the demon down neck-first toward the jagged stone platform.
The demon realized too late.
It tried to pull away. However, Damien didn't let it.
The impact was brutal.
Booom!!
A sickening crack echoed through the forest as the demon's neck snapped violently against the stone. Its body convulsed once, twice—then went slack.
Damien held it there for a mont longer, breathing hard, arms trembling.
Then he let go.
The corpse slid limply to the ground.
Silence fell.
Damien straightened slowly, bloodied, battered, but standing.
Luton surged forward without being told, engulfing the demon's body completely. Its surface rippled violently as it devoured the dense, potent essence within, swelling, compressing, growing stronger with every passing second.
Damien wiped his face, streaking it further with blood.
He looked down at the ruined clearing, the shattered forest, the absence of life where battle had raged.
Then he exhaled.
"Another one," he murmured. "Down."
Luton did not return.
At first, Damien thought nothing of it.
The forest was still settling from the violence—trees groaning as they collapsed under delayed damage, demonic essence dispersing like black mist through the air.
Corpses littered the ground. Ones belong to twisted demons, broken mana beasts, half-devoured remains where Luton had already passed once before moving on.
It was normal for the sli to roam a little.
But minutes passed.
Then longer.
And Damien realized sothing important.
He could no longer feel Luton's presence nearby—not because it was gone, but because it was everywhere.
A faint pull tugged at his perception, like a distant tide. Wherever fear spiked, wherever essence flared and tried to flee, Luton was there. The Stellar Sli was hunting—not passively, not opportunistically, but with purpose.
Damien exhaled slowly.
"So you decided to gorge yourself," he muttered.
He did not call it back.
He had already given permission.
Luton flowed through the Forest of Twin Disasters like a silent calamity.
It no longer moved as a single body.
It split. Sothing Damien had never thought to be possible.
Thin strands peeled off its main mass, slipping through cracks in the ground, pouring between roots, flattening into shadows cast by moonlight. Each fragnt was alive, aware, and hungry.
Runaway demons were the first to fall.
A horned lesser demon sprinted through the underbrush, panic overriding instinct. It had sensed the deaths—the intelligent one, the others—and it wanted nothing more than to disappear.
The ground beneath it softened.
Its legs sank.
Before it could scream, translucent mass surged upward, engulfing its torso, then its head. The demon flailed, claws tearing uselessly at the sli's surface.
Luton absorbed it whole.
The essence core never hit the ground. Flesh, bone, demonic energy—everything dissolved into the universal space within the sli, sorted, compressed, stored.
Elsewhere, a pack of scaled mana wolves tried to scatter, splitting in different directions.
They didn't make it ten ters.
Sli threads burst from the soil like spears, skewering two mid-leap. Another wolf tried to double back—only to slam into an invisible wall of gelatinous mass.
Luton closed in from all sides.
The forest grew quieter.
Not peaceful.
Empty.
Damien moved at his own pace, following destruction rather than causing it.
He didn't need to see Luton to know where it had been. The signs were unmistakable: clean patches of ground where nothing remained, faint ripples of residual mana, and the unnerving absence of scavengers.
Even predators knew better than to approach.
"This is what happens when you don't hold back," Damien murmured.
He stepped over a crushed demon skull and paused, crouching to inspect the ground. No blood. No remains. Even the demonic residue had been thinned out, filtered away.
Luton wasn't just eating.
It was cleaning.
A shrill screech echoed from deeper within the forest.
Damien didn't react.
Monts later, it cut off abruptly.
He straightened, eyes calm.
"Grade Four?" he guessed aloud.
There was no answer—only the distant, almost imperceptible thrum of sothing growing stronger.
Luton encountered resistance eventually.
A burrowing mana beast—massive, plated, with overlapping crystalline armor—erupted from the ground, roaring as it sensed the sli infiltrating its tunnels. Its essence flared brightly, enough to scorch nearby roots.
Luton recoiled.
Then adapted.
Instead of surrounding it, the sli flowed inside—seeping through joints in the armor, slipping into the beast's mouth as it roared again. The creature convulsed violently, trying to expel the intrusion.
Too late.
Luton expanded.
From within.
The beast's body ruptured, armor plates snapping outward as its internal structure collapsed. The sli poured back out, larger, denser, its surface shimring faintly with newly absorbed mana.
The essence core was consud last.
Deliberately.
Sowhere, Damien felt it—a subtle shift, like a lock turning halfway.
"Close," he said softly. "Very close."
Night deepened.
The forest that had once teed with danger now felt hollow, as if sothing fundantal had been removed. Demons that would normally stalk the dark had either fled far beyond the area or been erased entirely.
Luton finally began to reconverge.
Streams of sli flowed back together, rging into a single, massive body near Damien's position. It sloshed forward, surface pulsing, faint starlike motes flickering within its translucent mass.
It was bigger than before.
Much bigger.
Damien raised an eyebrow.
"You really didn't hold back," he said.
Luton bounced once, innocently.
Damien studied it closely. The density of its essence had changed—not just increased, but refined. Its presence felt heavier now, more real, as if it occupied more than just physical space.
"You're on the edge," he noted. "Grade Two, aren't you?"
Luton didn't answer, of course.
But it didn't deny it either.
Damien nodded slowly, thoughtful.
"This forest won't stay quiet," he said. "What we did tonight will attract attention."
Luton rippled.
"I know," Damien continued. "That's fine. Let them co."
He turned, beginning to walk deeper into the Forest of Twin Disasters once more.
Behind him, the Stellar Sli followed—full, powerful, and still faintly hungry.
The hunt was far from over.
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