[Location: The Abyss – Layer 1: The Ash Wastes]

[Time: Unknown]

There was no sound.

No wind. No birds. No screaming crowds.

There was only the sensation of cold, hard stone against a cheek.

Damien opened his eyes.

He didn't see the blue sky of Elias. He didn't see the golden dome of the Divine Barrier.

He saw only grey.

The sky was a churning ocean of slate-grey clouds, heavy and oppressive.

There were no stars. In the center of the sky hung a massive, silent sphere of absolute darkness, a Black Sun, rimmed by a corona of sickly purple light.

"Alive..." Damien rasped.

His voice sounded wrong. It was thin, weak, like dry leaves scraping together.

He tried to sit up.

COUGH.

His body convulsed. A spasm of agony tore through his chest, feeling like someone had poured liquid nitrogen into his lungs.

He retched, coughing up a mouthful of blood.

Shockingly, his blood wasn't red. It was dark, almost black, sizzling slightly as it hit the grey dust.

[System Alert: Environmental Hazard Detected.]

[Atmosphere: 100% Abyss Mana.]

[Warning: Celestial Life Physique is rejecting the environment.]

[Status: Mana Poisoning. Cellular Degradation imminent.]

Damien fell back, gasping. His body, the body that had the vitality of a dragon and the regeneration of the Celestial Life Physique dying.

The Celestial Life Physique absorbed ambient mana to heal him.

It was his greatest strength. But here, the ambient mana was toxic chaos.

His body was trying to "breathe" poison, and his cells were committing suicide to stop it.

"Isabelle..." Damien wheezed, his vision blurring.

He looked around. They were in a crater of obsidian glass, likely formed by their crash landing.

The Pantheon Sword lay a few feet away, its crystal blade dull and grey, completely drained of energy.

A few meters away, a figure lay face down in the ash.

"Izzy..."

Damien tried to crawl toward her. His limbs felt like lead. His skin was burning.

His body felt pathetically weak, even weaker than back when he was a baby, and his best skill was high-level milk sucking

Fortunately, before he could reach her, the figure moved.

Isabelle had pushed herself up.

Yet unlike him, she didn't cough. She didn't struggle. She stood up with a fluid, predatory grace that she had never possessed on the surface.

She looked different.

Her skin, usually pale, now had a faint, healthy flush. Her red eyes were glowing with a vibrant, internal luminescence.

The small horns hidden had elongated, curving back slightly like a crown.

She took a deep breath.

"The air..." Isabelle whispered, looking at her hands. "It tastes... sweet."

Feeling her body greedily absorbing the abyss mana, this was a situation she had never experienced before, back in Elias.

Unlike Damien, who was currently dying, she, on the other hand, felt as if she stayed long enough here, she might experience an overall evolution

Yes, the benefits were truly that great for a demon like her

On the surface, being a Half-Demon meant her mana was constantly fighting the "Order" of the human world. It exhausted her.

Here? It felt like she was home.

Getting herself back after a few seconds, she turned and saw Damien. Her eyes widened in shock.

"Young Master!"

She was at his side instantly. To Damien, she moved like a blur.

"You're burning up," Isabelle said, touching his forehead. Her hand felt impossibly cool and soothing against his feverish skin.

"Poison..." Damien choked out, gripping her wrist weakly.

"My body... can't handle... the mana."

Isabelle looked around. The wind was picking up, carrying razor-sharp shards of obsidian dust. The Black Sun beat down with a cold, radiative pressure.

"We need a shelter," Isabelle said firmly.

Instantly, her mind began to race as she began to deduce how best to handle the current situation

No matter what, she could not let him die in front of her; if that happened, then she would kill herself

So thinking of this, she reached down to pick him up.

Usually, Damien was heavier than her. He was tall, muscular, and dense. But Isabelle lifted him into her arms as if he were made of paper.

"Hold on, Master," she whispered, pulling him close to her chest.

She leaped.

BOOM.

She didn't use a spell. She simply just jumped.

The ground beneath her cracked from the sheer physical force of her legs. She launched fifty meters into the air, landing atop a ridge of jagged rock.

Damien's head lulled against her shoulder. Through the haze of pain, he saw the landscape stretching out before them.

It was a graveyard of giants.

Miles of grey ash dunes, punctuated by the skeletal remains of colossal beasts that dwarfed anything on the surface.

Ribcages the size of cathedrals jutted from the sand. Rivers of slow-moving, purple sludge carved through the valleys.

"There," Isabelle said, spotting a massive skull half-buried in the side of a cliff. The eye socket was large enough to be a cave.

She sprinted.

She moved with terrifying speed, dodging geysers of acidic steam and leaping over chasms. She didn't tire. She didn't slow down.

She reached the skull and slid inside the eye socket. It was dry and shielded from the wind.

She set Damien down gently against the bone wall. He was shivering violently now, his teeth chattering.

"Cold..." Damien mumbled. "So cold..."

Isabelle looked at him. The man who had faced down an army, the man who had killed a prince, was now trembling like a newborn.

She unclasped her cloak, the black Academy teacher's cloak and wrapped it around him.

Then, she sat down next to him and pulled him into her lap, wrapping her arms around him to share her body heat.

"I have you," Isabelle whispered, stroking his hair. Her demonic aura flared, creating a small bubble of warmth in the freezing dark.

"I have you, Damien."

Damien's eyes fluttered closed. For the first time since he met her, he wasn't the protector.

He was the burden.

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