SSS Awakening: Rebirth of the Strongest Vampire God - Chapter 624

Chapter 624: Two down
Naturally, Damon kept an eye on the little kitten, who only briefly looked towards his direction before she again got back into catching the little spark.

Clearly, the little thing was not affected by his poison. The spark also did not seem to care. So Damon continued without holding back.

In the blink of an eye, the entire place turned a shade of purple and green along with the swirling darkness at the center. Though the poison was clearly not strong enough to invade the lake itself, it was still able to persist in the air around the lake without being consumed instantly.

Damon was actually surprised at this. A part of him expected the whole thing to disappear even as he used the skill. This was an unexpected good outcome. It was almost as if some part of the poison was compatible with the shadow essence.

Did he snatch some shadow-friendly poison from somewhere? Maybe from these assassins?

Most probably. Damon did not care how exactly it happened, but it would be nice if he could pinpoint that poison and make more of it or change the flavor of the whole thing in general.

Damon once again snapped out of it as he found his thoughts running a mile a minute. Every single stray thought was a distraction and was going to be the death of him.

It looked like opening this set of meridians was not going to be a piece of cake just because he had already done it once.

He forced everything extraneous out, treasure chests, ice trial beasts, poison compatibility, the kitten screaming bloody murder at Goldy, gone. His breath steadied, even as the world around him pulsed in warped hues of black, green, and purple.

With a harsh hiss of breath, he re-centered his focus on the meridians. An immediate spike of agony tore through his neck.

The first meridian convulsed violently, almost snapping closed like a steel trap. Damon’s fingers dug into his knees again, every muscle in his body taut, veins rising under his skin like dark cords.

“Come on…” he growled under his breath.

His poison aura surged, swirling tighter around him. Instead of brute-forcing the meridian open, an approach that had killed him countless times in his past life, he continued to imagine his body being a free and open conduit for mana and letting everything pass through him freely.

This was a random imagery someone had picked up from some obscure place but it had become quite popular in his last life in the social threads. While the method itself was not that effective, Damon had found that it could be effective if one was in the right atmosphere.

Just like the one he was sitting in right now.

The first of the ten meridians strained and wavered. Damon felt it slipping from his control but he kept going for the imagery again and again without giving up.

CRACK.

The next second, a gush of energy flooded upward, burning cold and burning hot at the same time. One down, nine more to go.

And he already felt like his head was about to split open.

Damon sagged for a fraction of a second, panting softly. Sweat rolled down his jaw, mixing with the faint trail of blood from his nose. His pulse hammered in his ears, matching the deep rumble of the lake.

His Nine Million Poison Body ate through the surplus toxicity, stabilizing his internal systems enough to keep going. Barely. But the lake didn’t give him a moment to breathe.

The shadow essence surged again, heavier, more insistent, like a massive unseen hand pushing him deeper into the trial.

“Fine,” Damon muttered, eyes flickering with a faint, predatory glow. “I didn’t come here to babysit ten chokepoints. Let’s continue.”

Behind him, something slammed into a wall.

A furious MEOW! echoed.

Goldy’s panicked BZZZ! followed right after.

Damon ignored them. He couldn’t afford another slip. One distraction was death. He forced himself into the second meridian, gathering more mana. Each channel he opened made the next one more unstable, the energy inside him rising chaotically like water in a cracked dam.

But that was how it worked. The final few meridians were always the worst. They were the gates between life and death.

The second meridian shuddered the moment Damon nudged energy into it, reacting like a live wire dunked in cold water. Pain spiked so sharply up his spine that his vision blurred, even with his eyes closed. His jaw locked. A hot, metallic taste spread across his tongue.

It meant the channel was waking up. He guided the current again, slow, steady. The meridian bucked violently. Damon felt it twitch toward collapse, toward rupture. His face twisted as the pressure increased, threatening to burst through the fragile walls of the conduit.

He instantly moved forward. The shadow essence roared and the meridian quickly calmed down.

Not letting the change go, Damon pushed through the pain, through the pressure, through the instinctive terror that came with flirting so close to death. Then…

CRACK.

A second rush of energy tore upward, hot and frigid at once, flooding into his skull with a sharp, violent whoosh. Two open.

Damon let out a raw exhale, shoulders trembling before he forced himself upright again. “Good,” he murmured. “Keep going.” His head pulsed with a hammering ache. His neck throbbed.

A faint stream of blood slid from his right ear this time, caught in the corner of his jaw as it trailed down. His Nine Million Poison Body scrambled to repair the damage, knitting tissue back together in real time, but even it struggled under the relentless punishment.

Before he could stabilize, the lake reacted. A heavier wave of shadow pressure slammed down on him, like a mountain dropping an inch closer to crushing him into the stone.

The lake wanted more. It wanted to see if he would break.

“Alright,” he rasped. “You want to play hardball?”

He straightened his spine, ignoring the stabbing pain lancing up his nerves, and plunged directly into the third meridian, one of the most infamous ones.

***

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