Chapter 780: Bringing down the big guy

"So you can’t digest everything after all." Damon continued to observe the creature as more and more parts of it started to petrify. The sections that crumbled also did not regenerate, nor did they flow back into the main body like everything else the creature had absorbed before.

It was slow, but it was continuous. Soon, more sections began to stiffen.

It was no longer limited to a single corner of the massive body. The phenomenon was spreading, slow but undeniable, as patches of the tar-like mass lost their fluid nature and hardened into brittle, lifeless fragments.

Each time one of those sections crumbled into dust, it failed to return to the greater whole. Small but permanent losses were slowly accumulating.

Damon’s eyes gleamed faintly. "It’s still not fast enough. I can’t afford to spend too much time here. The poison has to be improved. Otherwise, something unpredictable might happen."

Though it should be safe for the time being, as he hadn’t absorbed any bloodline fragment yet, he did not want to take chances. It was best to finish this matter as soon as possible and return. It was time to speed up things.

Damon immediately pulled a few people from his soul space. There was no point in breaking his head over this when he had a whole group of people who were experts in this exact field.

Arya and the old men from the Poison Sigil order appeared one after another in the outside world.

"My Lord." Arya bowed politely.

"Heh. Could you stop doing that? You do not have to call me that. Just call me Damon like always."

"Ah... huh... right." The little girl awkwardly fidgeted.

Damon saw that it was making her uncomfortable, so he did not push her. "Arya, look at this creature. It can absorb energy and basically whatever attack you throw at it. It is weak against petrification poison. Do you think you can make something quickly to kill it?"

Arya followed his gaze, and for a brief moment, the casual awkwardness in her expression disappeared completely, replaced by a sharp, focused seriousness that did not belong to someone her age. The old men behind her reacted even more strongly, their eyes widening as they took in the sheer scale of the creature stretching across the dead world.

For a few seconds, no one spoke. They were observing.

The tar-like mass continued its slow, relentless movement, absorbing the blood rain without pause, even as parts of it stiffened and crumbled away under the effects of Damon’s poison.

One of the elders stepped forward, his brows furrowed deeply as he extended his senses. "This is not simple resistance," he muttered slowly. "It is breaking down everything it consumes at a fundamental level and converting it into usable energy."

Another elder nodded grimly. "My Lord, your poison is working, but only because it introduces conflicting properties that cannot be harmonized."

Arya remained silent for a moment longer, her eyes fixed on the sections that were petrifying and breaking apart. Then she spoke. "It’s not that it is weak to petrification," she said quietly, but her voice was steady. "It is weak to instability."

Damon’s eyes flickered slightly. "Explain."

Arya pointed toward one of the crumbling sections. "Your poison is not just turning it to stone. It is disrupting the conversion process inside it. The moment something cannot be broken down properly, it stops being part of its system."

One of the elders immediately added, "And once that happens, it cannot reintegrate it, which is why it turns into dust instead of flowing back."

Damon nodded slowly, his mind already moving ahead. "So I don’t need stronger poison... I need a more complex unstable poison with possibly unpredictable properties."

Arya looked up at him and gave a small nod. "Yes. Right now, your poison is forcing errors in its system, but the rate is too slow. It is still processing most of what you are feeding it."

Another elder stepped forward, his voice gaining a hint of excitement despite the danger. "If we can create a compound poison that constantly changes its properties, then the creature will not be able to adapt its conversion process in time."

The group then started discussing amongst themselves, and Damon did not intervene. He silently continued to listen to them. At the same time, he summoned three blood avatars, who started experimenting with the poison running through his blood.

He might not be as experienced as the poison masters of the order, but poison literally flowed through his body, and that gave him an advantage. He could already successfully isolate some poisons and modulate them to a certain extent.

Soon, the poison testing began at full speed. It looked like everyone understood the seriousness of the situation. Within minutes, the rate of petrification visibly increased.

"This is good, but it is still not enough." Damon clicked his tongue.

"Just give me some more time. I can do better." The little alchemist hurriedly mumbled as she started brewing a poison from scratch.

"Let me know if you need any herbs." Damon did not disturb her.

Time ticked by quickly, and the massive creature was slowly and steadily losing its volume. "If things continue like this, we would need several weeks to months to put down this thing."

Damon wanted to speed things up and started testing out some attacks. Most of them had similar effects and simply got absorbed, but his wyvern breath managed to burn a part of it. "Maybe there is a tactic other than poison I could use?"

If Wyvern fire was effective, then what about hellfire? Just like Damon guessed, hellfire also left some damage behind. Maybe with time, the creature would also learn to assimilate these forms of energy, but for now, it was definitely taking hits from these attacks.

"Hmmm... so higher forms of energy work against you." Damon nodded.

The good news was that he was starting to find more cracks in its armor. The bad news was that he hadn’t really upgraded these attacks, so they were quite weak. Perhaps if he had killed a nest of wyverns, his wyvern breath would have blasted this thing in one hit.

But how could one come across beasts like wyverns easily? So his skill was still stagnating. In fact, his poison was killing at a faster pace than these attacks.

Then he suddenly had an idea. He might not have upgraded these skills enough, but he knew someone else who was quite proficient at using a higher energy attack.

"She said she was going to try and break through... would she be free?" Damon wondered as he called out his pocket angel.

The next second, a bright and bubbly voice resounded in the dull gray world. "Hubby! You called me? You actually called me? Something is going to happen today! This entire world is going to shatter today! You actually called me without me nagging you a thousand times! When has this ever happened before!"

Aurora smiled sweetly and dashed to him, hugging him tightly.

Damon chuckled at the drama queen, patting her gently. "I am sorry. The situation right now is like that. Soon, everything will be better, I promise." His gaze turned towards the massive creature. "Very soon." He repeated with his fists clenched.

Aurora’s eyes widened as she finally took note of the large jelly that was everywhere. It was like a mountain she couldn’t see the end of.