My Living Shadow System Devours To Make Me Stronger

Damon had vastly underestimated the beautiful yet ominous crystal tower.

“Hahahahaha! YES! FINALLY! I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED!”

Nearby, a man screamed in ecstatic madness as his flesh split apart.

Bones cracked.

Limbs twisted.

His body malformed grotesquely while foreign energy reshaped him into something no longer human.

“YES! YES! FINALLY I HAVE A BODY!”

Silence followed the madness.

Then Damon slowly closed his eyes.

“We’re too late…”

His voice sounded hollow.

“The fall of Lysithara has begun.”

There was no changing this anymore.

From what Valerie had once told him, the city would soon descend into complete war. Similar towers around the world would bring forth more Outsiders.

And many of them were vile beyond comprehension.

Though not all were enemies.

Some, like the blind old Daoist, had chosen to help Lysithara.

But the Outsiders themselves were chaotic beings. Rivals. Allies. Enemies. Faiths clashing against faiths.

The Unknown God never wanted them united beneath a single banner.

What he desired—

Was chaos.

At the foot of the tower, Damon watched something filthy begin to rise and spread outward.

Corruption.

The rulers of the city immediately moved to suppress it before it could spread further.

“Corruption…” Damon whispered.

Throughout the city, Outsiders manifested in different forms.

One of them appeared as a colossal golden phoenix wrapped in divine flames.

The moment Damon saw it, hatred filled his heart.

“Morticai…”

The vile phoenix noticed him instantly.

From the heavens above, it looked down upon the corrupted pair standing in the streets like insects.

Filthy.

Impure.

Then the sky ignited.

Flames descended upon the city.

Damon barely had time to grab Lilith before an ocean of phoenix fire engulfed everything for miles.

He wrapped his monstrous body around hers protectively while the flames devoured his flesh.

His corrupted form slowly broke apart beneath the divine inferno.

Elsewhere in the city, another horror emerged.

A vast tide of nightmares flooded outward as Ittorath’s laughter echoed endlessly through the corruption.

Within that tide existed a shapeless entity so incomprehensible Damon could barely process its existence.

“Ittorath…” he whispered in horror.

The corruption spread like a black ocean crashing through the streets.

This was doom.

This was what Damon imagined the end of days would look like.

Yet before the corruption fully touched the city, someone moved.

A single hand rose.

And the entire wave vanished instantly before it reached the ground.

Mugu.

But stopping the corruption itself meant little.

The nightmares following Ittorath carried endless whispers. Wherever they passed, people clawed at their own ears screaming while their bodies twisted grotesquely into malformed horrors.

Damon watched the city die while flames slowly consumed his broken form.

Beyond the walls, forests began changing.

Trees rose unnaturally while Ythar’s foul corruption spread across the land like a living plague, cutting off escape routes entirely.

“Ahh… ahh…”

Damon gasped painfully while holding Lilith close.

All of this happened in moments.

All of this had already happened in the past.

And they experienced it as powerless weaklings.

How could they hope to change the world when they were too busy struggling merely to survive it?

They changed nothing.

They could change nothing.

You are weak.

You are insignificant.

You are not one of the great heroes capable of altering fate.

You are merely another cog trying desperately to survive.

You cannot save the world.

You can only endure whatever suffering life throws at you.

That was the lesson.

Nothing more.

And now life had commanded him to die.

So Damon died.

Only ash remained.

When Bel finally woke again, she was covered in terrible burns.

Her memories were fractured and incomplete.

She wandered through a city reduced to ash, corpses, and ruin.

Her body had become fully corrupted.

Hideous.

Monstrous.

Her cracked mouth slowly opened.

“S… Sander…”

No one answered.

Tears streamed down her ruined face as she searched desperately for the children.

Then she saw a little girl hiding nearby.

And when Bel looked at her—

All she felt was hunger.

Tears fell harder from her eyes as the final fragment of her humanity was swallowed by rot.

Her decayed teeth sank into flesh.

A terrible shrieking laughter escaped her throat as she ran wildly through the ruined city toward the forests beyond, where Ythar’s whispers drowned the world in madness.

From that day onward, she became known as—

The Beldam of the Whispering Forest.

This single event did not bring Lysithara to ruin in a day, but it became one of the foundational fractures that ensured its eventual collapse. It marked the true beginning of a conflict that would never reach an end.

The sages, working alongside Mugu, would eventually attempt to call upon the Unknown God. In response, he granted them forbidden knowledge the means to forge the Ascendant Armors. These creations were both blessing and curse: divine instruments that empowered the rulers of Lysithara beyond mortal limits, while simultaneously binding them to a fate of inevitable downfall. With each armor forged, the city’s rulers grew stronger… and closer to extinction.

In time, the City Lord Vathren was consumed by corruption.

Valerie Sunwarden’s fate was far more tragic. Enduring corruption for more than an epoch, she refused to surrender her will. Instead, she systematically severed her consciousness from her decaying body, preserving fragments of her mind in isolation so she could continue resisting the rot. In the end, after countless years of suffering and sacrifice, she died surrounded by her students dying in the same way she had always lived: protecting others until the very end.

Years later, a young Damon Grey, lost within the Whispering Forest, would encounter the Beldam of the Whispering Forest.

A Fourth Class corrupted entity.

A monster that wandered the ruins of Lysithara, collecting relics it could no longer understand, whispering names it could no longer remember.

And Damon would end her suffering.

He would not recognize her as anything more than another failed creature of the rot.

Only after her death would he take the Ascendant Armors she had gathered from the ruins of the fallen city relics forged from the collapse of rulers, sages, and gods alike.