CHAPTER 309: YOU TRULY HAVE NO SHAME

Despite everything, Damon grinned, looking at the new ring on his finger. This was not bad. Not bad at all. Now he had one more weapon in his arsenal against the super ten!

Damon then proceeded to completely ignore the woman’s words and spat in a dozen more vials before storing them all in the ring. He made a mental note to periodically do this to test out things as much as possible and stock up on deadly venom.

"You truly have no shame," the same voice spoke up again, this time in his mind.

Damon casually shrugged with a grin. "Shame is for people who die early. I prefer survivability." Now that everything he needed to do was out of the way, he quickly got back to training.

Bloodlands was not going to be easy, but there was still one more place he needed to visit before heading to the Bloodlands. This place was going to be a lot tougher than Bloodlands ever could be.

He needed to prepare for that. A lot was riding on his ability to get into this place. To be more specific, a staggering 2.5 billion was riding on this!

Damon quickly started working on his skills consolidation, and soon, the entire training time was gone in the blink of an eye. The last around his work had yielded immediate results but this time he did not really have anything to show for the several hours of training, except for some minor improvements.

Damon did not feel disheartened. In fact, this was the expected outcome. It takes many many days of training to progress to the next level in any skill, let alone create new skills from existing skills, a more powerful one at that.

Sweat beaded on Damon’s forehead as he finally opened his eyes, rising from the center of the training platform. Though there had been no new flashy gains, he could feel his mana control had deepened, and his cast grown more instinctive. Sometimes, the smallest polish made the sharpest weapons deadlier.

"Training complete," Varnyx’s voice echoed from the chamber’s boundary. "Would you like my help with the temporal distortion effects, my lord?" The old vampire sounded genuinely concerned.

"It’s okay. I will handle it." As soon as the timer ticked down, Damon felt a wave of imbalance wash over him and his mental exhaustion doubling back on him and hitting him several times higher.

Damon staggered slightly, catching himself on the edge of the platform. The aftereffects of intense time dilation weren’t just physical, they rippled through one’s soul, making the world feel too fast, too loud, too real. His vision shimmered with phantom afterimages of mana circuits and half-cast spells.

But he forced himself upright, gritting his teeth. This was part of the price. The price of pushing limits. Of clawing past thresholds others wouldn’t even dare glance at. He took a deep breath, steadying his soul, feeling it slowly recalibrate with the natural flow of time outside the chamber.

Varnyx approached cautiously, holding a steaming cup of something thick and crimson. "Bloodbrew elixir. Designed to alleviate some of the temporal recoil. A gift from the alchemy wing."

Damon accepted it without a word and downed the brew in one gulp. The taste was awful, somewhere between rust and bitter herbs, but the effects were immediate. The buzzing in his nerves dulled, and his thoughts began to clear. He exhaled and finally stood tall again.

"Thanks," he muttered, rolling his shoulders. "I needed that. Do you have more?"

"Of course, my Lord," Varnyx replied with a slight bow. "I will go and bring more right now."

Damon gave a nod and stretched his limbs one final time. There was a stiffness in his joints that even the elixir couldn’t fully erase, but the haze in his mind had lifted. The subtle increase in elemental sensitivity, the smoother mana flow, and the instinctive feel for his skill synergy, all of it told him that his foundation was sharper than before.

While Varnyx left to fetch more elixirs, Damon walked to the main area, where his throne for the week was located. Damon felt surreal as he sat on it. Of course, this was all going to last only for a couple more days if he did not manage to somehow prepare the 2.5 billion gold coins he needed.

The auction netted him some money but it was never going to give the full amount. No player or guild had the ability to bring out such an enormous amount. Even if he tried amassing wealth from the masses by auctioning more of his spit, it wouldn’t be enough.

Any more of those vials in the market and the value would come down and eventually he would only be able to make money if his spit ended up being as common place as health potions. Even then it was doubtful that he would be able to touch the numbers.

Damon leaned back on the throne, his fingers tapping rhythmically against the armrest as he mulled over his options. The gold requirement wasn’t just steep, it was borderline insane. He didn’t even want to think about how close the deadline was creeping.

Naturally, he had a plan. This was not like 100 gold coin loan he had taken in the beginning of the game was yet to return. Wait, did Ellora just cancel it? He checked it status screen and it was nowhere to be seen.

Damon chuckled and shook his head. Ellora had exceeded his expectations in many ways. He needed to make sure that the woman became his permanent follower no matter what happened with the Blood Hall.

He wasn’t foolish enough to think that holding the lord position was going to be an easy task. It was an impossible one and an uphill fight.

And the first step towards it, was making sure he got the elite back up he needed for the upcoming wars. There was no more point in hesitating. He needed to visit ’that’ place.

Only ’that’ place had the ability to throw money at him left and right until he was good and satisfied.