Chapter 815: You are done for

The attack did not do much to the clone itself, but it completely nullified the Time Pause skill. Time Pause shattered, sending a vicious backlash through all five bodies just as the gods regained their freedom.

The woman in green immediately seized the wrist buried in her chest. Her fingers tightened, and green flames raced up the clone’s arm, burning through the tendrils still feeding on her. Damon severed the limb before the fire could spread any farther, leaving the hand inside her while he pulled the clone backward.

"A corrupted dares to defile me like this?" Her eyes reddened with rage and madness as she started gathering a tremendous amount of power. However, her face quickly paled as she realized that something was strong.

She was... poisoned?

Her insides were rotting where the severed hand remained buried in her chest. The flesh around it had turned dark, and thin veins of discoloration were spreading toward her heart. She pushed her power toward the affected area, intending to burn everything foreign out of her body, but the moment it reached the wound, the decay accelerated.

Her eyes widened.

Damon felt the surge through the strands still inside her and grinned. She had severed his arm, but apparently she hadn’t considered what he might leave behind.

"Something wrong?" he asked.

The goddess tore the hand out of her chest. It disintegrated between her fingers, scattering droplets that she immediately incinerated, but the damage within her continued spreading. She could feel tiny threads embedded throughout the wound, each carrying the same foul power.

It wasn’t an ordinary poison. Whatever he had put inside her was feeding on the flesh it destroyed.

"You filthy-"

She doubled over before finishing, coughing dark blood into her palm. The enormous attack gathering around her dispersed as she redirected everything toward containing the damage. Green light wrapped around her torso, isolating the affected flesh, and for the first time she looked toward the others for help.

Damon didn’t give her the chance to ask.

His clone lunged, its missing arm reforming as the other hand drove toward her throat. She raised a barrier between them, but it flickered when she diverted power away from the poison. Damon struck the same point twice, forcing cracks through it while the rot spread another inch toward her heart.

She couldn’t hold both.

A bolt of lightning caught the clone across the back and hurled it past her. Damon twisted in midair, restoring his balance while Minnahithaya’s whisker swept between them. The eel placed himself across the line of attack, shielding the woman behind a curtain of crackling light.

"Withdraw and purge it," he ordered.

Damon clicked his tongue. He had been a fraction too slow, but the other four clones were still moving, and the connection between them carried more than stolen energy. He could feel the same damage beginning inside two of the other gods he had wounded.

One had already noticed. He pressed a hand against his abdomen and ripped out a piece of his own flesh, burning it before the crimson threads could burrow farther. The other was still gathering power to strike back.

Damon turned that clone toward him.

There was no point chasing the woman through a wall of lightning when someone else was kindly ignoring the problem.

The god thrust a blazing palm toward his face. Damon ducked beneath it, letting the edge of the attack tear through his shoulder, and caught the man’s wrist with his regenerating hand. At the same moment, he pulled on the threads left inside the wound.

The god’s attack faltered.

Damon drove his other hand back into the opening.

This time, he didn’t spread his tendrils throughout the body. He gathered them into a single thick strand and forced it straight toward the core, following the path already weakened by the decay. The man tried to retreat, but Damon held him close, pouring stolen Origin Energy into his grip.

"You should have checked," Damon muttered.

The god’s free hand struck his jaw hard enough to tear it loose. Damon’s head snapped sideways, but the tendril reached its target, and a torrent of power rushed into him before the man could strike again.

Across the battlefield, the elderly god raised his staff.

Damon saw him through another clone’s eyes and immediately sent that body forward. It would never reach the elder in time to hurt him, but it forced him to turn the waiting attack toward it.

That was all Damon needed. He was about to wreck havoc but at the last minute, things once again changed.

A god was still a god. His body blurred, and the space around Damon erupted into countless cutting currents. They tore through the clone’s back and shoulders, trying to wrench him away from the hand buried in the god’s abdomen.

Damon tightened his grip.

"Get off me!"

The god twisted his wrist. A compressed blade of wind formed between his fingers and swept across Damon’s elbow, severing the arm holding him. Before the limb could fall away, blood tendrils burst from its stump and wrapped around the god’s waist.

Damon dragged himself closer, practically pressing his ruined face against the man’s shoulder.

The bastard wanted distance. That was reason enough to deny him any.

A violent gust struck him beneath the chin, snapping his head backward. At the same moment, a rotating shell formed around them, its inner surface packed with blades of compressed air. The wind god stood untouched at its center while everything surrounding him was shredded.

At the same time all the other Gods started attacking Damon at the same time, pummeling with all sorts of attacks filled with origin energy.

Damon felt every impact through the connection between his bodies.

A golden hammer smashed through one blood avatar’s shoulder. Another vanished beneath a torrent of white fire. The avatar rushing toward the elderly god barely raised its arms before the staff released a pale beam that tore it apart.

Two bodies gone. The remaining three were being ripped to pieces. Damon’s real body was also under the direct assault of many Gods at the same time. He was completely overwhelmed and drowning under a pile of attacks.

"I underestimated you before my friend. I didn’t think that you could build yourself up all the way here. You should have died a long time ago and yet you stand here in front of me as a God. But how many times do you think I will keep repeating the same mistake?"

Aiden’s voice sounded in his ears.

"Do you think I was going to let you devour all the weak Gods one after the other and reach the pinnacle? You are done for, my friend. I can see that the corruption has already taken root inside you. Now it is only a matter of time before you are completely gone. I am just speeding things up a little."

"And don’t bother tinkering with the time again. It is a neat trick but there are plenty of ways to counter it. You will not be able to alter time in my presence ever again. You are truly done for, my friend. Farewell. It was a pleasure meeting you in two lifetimes. There will never be a third time."