My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Chapter 1015: Chapter 1017: The Ship

Damon pressed forward inside Mugu’s body as they crossed the ancient wilds of the demon continent. This was an era when the gods no longer ruled and mankind stood in what many would later call its golden age.

There were no demons here. The temple did not exist in any meaningful form. Its influence was faint, almost forgotten.

Humans were still discovering the world, and without gods to shield them, they had learned to rely on themselves.

"Ahh." Mugu wiped sweat from his brow as he walked along the rocky path.

Ten months. That was how long they had been traveling.

During that time, whenever Damon possessed Mugu, he pushed the young man’s body to its limits. He forced him to run farther, fight harder, endure more. And when Damon was not in control, Mugu trained his mana obsessively and worked on correcting every flaw he noticed in himself.

Even with the clothes the old woman had given him, he looked worn and thin.

That afternoon, Mugu stopped by a river and knelt to wash his face. The moment the cold water touched his skin, Damon felt himself pulled out of the body. His soul drifted backward.

Damon frowned.

This always happened before something important.

For ten months he had watched Mugu live. At times he had lived as him.

Sleep had been the hardest part. Mugu would lie awake imagining Abellona and what she might be suffering. The thoughts fed his rage. His frustration. His self hatred.

Yet he never turned back.

The more he imagined her nights, the more he despised his own weakness.

Mugu splashed water on his face again and exhaled slowly.

Ashcroft’s voice echoed around Damon’s drifting form.

"We are close to the sea. I can see the black mountains."

Damon looked up.

Beyond the trees, jagged black peaks rose against the sky. And past them lay the sea.

Mugu’s head suddenly jerked to the side.

A group of men had appeared between the trees.

They were from different races. Humans. Fae. Beastkin. Even a mountain elf. Their clothes were rough. Their weapons were sharp and well used.

"Bandits," Damon whispered.

Ashcroft’s voice turned cold. "Worse. Slavers."

Mugu did not hesitate.

He turned and ran.

Branches snapped as he sprinted into the forest. An arrow sliced past his ear and thudded into a tree ahead of him. He stumbled, rolled through bushes, then scrambled back to his feet and kept running.

The slavers gave chase.

The pursuit lasted for hours. Mugu fought like a cornered animal when they caught him. He bit, kicked, and slashed with the sword until blood covered his hands.

But he was only human.

Eventually, he was overwhelmed and chained.

The mountain elf slaver yanked the chain attached to Mugu’s neck and laughed as the young man finally collapsed unconscious.

"What a feral kid. Full of spirit. He will sell for a good price."

Mugu woke up around noon the next day.

The first thing he noticed was the smell.

Human waste. Sweat. Rot.

He blinked his eyes open and found himself inside a cramped wooden cage mounted on a wagon. A massive beast dragged the wagon forward. Around him were dozens of people, crammed together, filthy, and half dead. Some lay in their own filth. Others stared blankly ahead like broken animals.

Damon slipped back into Mugu’s body and immediately felt nauseous from the stench.

"Well," Damon muttered, "looks like he is a slave now."

Ashcroft’s tone remained calm. "This may actually be fortunate. Slavers like these sell across continents. If I am correct, he might be heading toward Soltheon after all."

"You say that like it is a good thing."

Ashcroft gave a faint, thoughtful hum.

"We will find out soon enough."

Sure enough, after three days of travel, the scent of salt reached them before the sea did.

When the trees thinned, Damon saw it.

A warped wooden ship groaning at the shoreline. Cages littered the sand like discarded crates. Every time a wagon arrived, the captives were dragged out, prodded, turned, inspected like livestock, then shackled again and hauled toward the ship.

Damon’s jaw tightened.

"These people are monsters."

"Yes. Anyone who owns another person is, without question, a great evil," Ashcroft replied.

The cage door screeched open. Hands reached in.

Damon’s eyes narrowed as he watched them grab a woman by the chin and force her mouth open to check her teeth.

"It wasn’t this bad in my time," he said coldly.

"Yes, because the goddess races had demons to enslave from war, and demons did the same to them. Enslaving your own became illegal. Hatred was the easiest way to forge unity. In the end, we are shaped by fear and molded by hate. Our minds are small. That is what it means to be human."

Damon slowly shook his head.

"I agree with the first part. But that isn’t all there is. Even a tyrant wants to see beauty. We wish to be good... we just succumb to fear and hate. It is easier to hate than to accept."

"That’s a very optimistic view. One I didn’t expect from you," Ashcroft said as Damon, inside Mugu’s body, was yanked forward by the chains.

Damon did not resist. He walked as though he were not bound at all.

"Far from it. I am someone who failed to be a decent human being."

They threw him into the sand.

He hit the ground, rolled with the impact, and sprang back to his feet in one motion. The large man who had tossed him barely had time to blink.

Damon leapt.

He planted a foot against the man’s thigh, vaulted upward, and whipped his chains across the man’s neck. The metal links bit deep. With a violent twist of his hips, he snapped the man’s balance—and his windpipe—with it.

The body fell before Damon did.

He landed, rolled through the sand, and surged toward the man who looked like the leader.

Something slammed into him mid-stride.

A raw blast of magic struck his chest and hurled him backward across the beach. He crashed, rolled, and pushed himself up as whips lashed down from all sides.

Skin split.

Blood sprayed.

Damon did not slow.

He caught one of the whips mid-swing. The slaver yanked, expecting resistance.

Damon followed the pull.

He rushed in along the length of the whip, stepped inside the man’s guard, kicked his knee sideways, and drove the dagger he had stolen straight into the man’s temple.

A boot crashed into his ribs.

He tumbled across the sand—

—and felt himself ripped out of Mugu’s body.

"Ahhh, come on. I wasn’t done yet," Damon muttered as his soul floated upward.

"Hmm. It seems escaping here would alter the narrative too much. However, killing those two was permitted. I imagine Mugu did the same," Ashcroft observed calmly.

Damon smiled faintly as below him Mugu was beaten half to death.

"He’s grown stronger than he was in the village. He may yet reach first class on his own."

Ashcroft chuckled softly.

"Are you getting attached to the boy?"

Damon watched as Mugu refused to scream despite the blows.

"Yes... there’s something about him that makes you want to cheer for him. He’s truly remarkable."

Ashcroft fell quiet. High praise coming from Damon.

Mugu did not let anything break him.

But Ashcroft knew—

"The more unyielding he is, the worse the damage when he finally breaks."

"Being the first demon was no easy feat," Ashcroft continued. "He would have had to violate every rule the goddess put in place to prevent the rise of the Unknown God."

Damon looked down at the unconscious, bloodied youth lying in the sand.

"So what he did... is why it became easier in later years?"

"Yes."

The air below deck was thick. Wet. Unmoving.

Hundreds of bodies lay chained together in the dark, pressed so tightly that breathing felt like theft.

"Ahh... ahh..."

Mugu fought for each breath. His ribs ached from the beatings, his skin torn and scabbed over in layers. Four other slaves lay half across his body, their weight pinning him to the wooden floor slick with sweat and filth.

Someone had died earlier that day.

The rot came quickly in this heat.

Within days, the smell became a living thing, crawling into the lungs, settling at the back of the throat. Mugu gagged more than once, but there was nothing in his stomach to bring up.

In his mind, he counted.

They always came for the corpses.

And when they did...

He would become one of them.

From what he had overheard, the dead were thrown overboard. The sea was freedom compared to this suffocation.

Slowly, carefully, he shifted his chains and rubbed his body against the man who had died beside him. He dragged his arms across the corpse’s bloated skin, smeared himself in the stench of decay until even he could barely stand it.

Time had no meaning in the dark. It could have been a day. It could have been two.

Then—

The hatch above creaked open.

Light leaked in like a blade cutting through the dark.

Mugu went still.

Boots thudded down the steps. Men covered their noses with cloth as they moved through the bodies.

They began loading the corpses onto wheelbarrows while the living reached out with trembling hands.

"Water... please... water..."

"Show mercy... forgive me..."

"Help me..."

These were not voices anymore.

They were the sounds of spirits already broken.

Mugu let his head loll to the side at an unnatural angle. His eyes stayed open but unfocused. His chest barely moved.

The man who reached him didn’t bother checking for a pulse. The wounds. The smell. The stillness.

Good enough.

He grabbed Mugu by the torn shirt and dragged him up, tossing him onto the growing pile of bodies. Limbs and faces pressed into him from every side.

Mugu did not react.

But his eyes were awake.

After nearly half an hour, they finished loading the dead and began pushing the heavy wheelbarrows back up toward the deck.

For the first time in days—

Mugu saw the sun.

And it burned.