Chapter 304 - Almighty Devour
Han Wu enhanced the Dark Locust Stomach to Stage 9 and awakened its final trait. Three options appeared for him to choose from.
[Option 1: Dark Locust Shade – Materializes the Dark Locust Stomach as a ravenous shade. It cannot be killed while the user is alive. Strength set at 10% of the user’s power.]
[Option 2: Almighty Devour – Digests everything within a defined range that the user recognizes as food. It also serves as a devastating wide-range attack.]
[Option 3: Dimensional Storage Stomach – Stores an infinite amount of food for digestion at a later time.]
All three options were amazing, and he faced a dilemma.
Dark Locust Shade released a ravenous shadow that could not die as long as he lived. It served as a valuable pawn that could wear down his enemy.
Almighty Devour worked like a domain skill that allowed him to consume anything within a designated range. It not only provided energy through digestion but also served as a formidable AoE attack.
Dimensional Storage Stomach offered limitless storage, letting him devour an endless amount of food and save it for later digestion.
Han Wu weighed each carefully before finally selecting the second option. Almighty Devour synergized perfectly with his Life Cells’ Infinite Energy trait for him to recover swiftly. The other two options were exceptional, but his standards were too high to settle for anything else.
With this enhancement, one of his body parts reached the pinnacle of Stage 9. Relief should have followed, yet he felt only heightened tension. Twenty-four Demon Lords remained, and most of his other body parts had yet to reach their maximum.
If the Demon King Festival ended prematurely, he would lose the chance to gather more Demonic Origin and further upgrade his body parts. He pushed himself to work faster to kill more demons and upgrade his remaining body parts to Stage 9.
The only places where he could hunt large numbers of demons lay within the territories of the Twelve Demons. Those domains teemed with high-ranking fiends, and Han Wu could harvest their Demonic Origin while devouring them for more energy.
Han Wu used Dragonification and shot off in a random direction with urgent speed. Once his body shifted into a humanoid dragon, his velocity soared. In the span of five minutes, he had already cut across several hundred kilometers.
He trespassed into the territory of the Tough Demon, one of the Twelve, with the clear intent to challenge it. The moment he crossed the border, he summoned sand clones through Spirit Core and set them loose upon the local demons.
His actions convinced the demons that the Desert Demon had come to seize their land. In panic, they rallied their tribes to defend their territory.
While chaos spread, Han Wu quietly used Almighty Devour. The new trait treated every demon within his recognition range as prey and started digesting them.
The effect spread so broadly that most of the demons failed to realize they were being consumed. Only those with sharper senses felt the strange fever creeping across their skin.
This was Han Wu’s first time using the trait, and he still lacked full control over it. Soon, however, he realized he could adjust the range of its effect. By shrinking the radius to ten kilometers, he drastically intensified its digestion effect.
The demons clashing with his sand clones suddenly felt their skin sear as if from an invisible fire. In truth, they were being corroded by the Dark Locust Stomach’s enzymes. Under Almighty Devour, the stomach’s digestive fluids did not take liquid form but spread instead as a gas that seeped into every pore. Prolonged exposure made the demons’ skin blister, burn, and dissolve. The corpses scattered across the battlefield were digested ten times faster than the still-living demons.
The demons soon realized something was amiss when none of them could kill a single sand clone. They knew they had to find the Desert Demon and destroy it if they wanted the clones to vanish, but another mystery unsettled them. Their fallen comrades had disappeared entirely, leaving behind only clothes and belongings on the bloodstained ground. Where were their corpses?
The answer revealed itself when some demons witnessed it with their own eyes. The corpses were not stolen at all. They were digested. Flesh, blood, and bone alike melted into nothing.
“What’s going on?”
“Master, please help us!”
Fear gripped the demons as death closed in, and they prayed desperately for the Tough Demon’s aid. Their pleas somehow reached the heavens they believed in.
As Han Wu slaughtered his enemies, a figure plummeted from the sky like a meteor, aiming directly for him. He sensed the Tough Demon’s focus lock onto him and instinctively beat his wings to avoid the strike.
The Tough Demon lost its target and slammed to the ground. The impact shook the earth, and the shockwave crushed several of its already grievously injured underlings. The demon ignored their deaths entirely. It cared for only one being: Han Wu, the intruder who dared enter its territory.
Sensing its bloodlust, Han Wu transformed using Dragonification again and started attacking. He had already slain three of the Twelve Demons and carried considerable experience against powerful foes, yet he could not deny that the Tough Demon lived up to its fearsome reputation.
Its stamina seemed limitless. With a massive, unyielding frame, the Tough Demon regenerated rapidly and never paused to rest. It appeared capable of fighting relentlessly for three days and nights without faltering.
Han Wu had no intention of wasting that much time. Activating Examine, he searched for its weaknesses, but his Epistian Brain returned only a handful of trivial flaws. None of them could help him bring down the demon, not even if he fought it without rest for a full day.
“Damn, I can’t rely on Examine,” he cursed. “I need to create a weakness for it.”
He focused on a tiny section of the demon’s chest and activated Almighty Devour, compressing the effect to a single square centimeter. The concentrated digestive fluids started eating away at the Tough Demon’s flesh, carving out a wound. Still, the injury was shallow, and the demon’s resilience allowed it to endure the pain and continue fighting.
With no other choice, Han Wu started to kite the Tough Demon to stall for time. He kept Almighty Devour focused on that small area, gradually widening the wound.
The Tough Demon’s tenacity was extraordinary, but even it could not withstand Almighty Devour indefinitely. Finally, Han Wu succeeded in digesting its Demon Heart, ending its life. Another of the Twelve Demons was added to his tally.