Chapter 542: Abyss’s End Goal

Blegh!

Damian spat out a mouthful of blood while clutching his chest, yet the amused gleam never left his eyes. Rah immediately raised a bowl beneath his mouth to catch the blood, her expression filled with concern, while Alice gently patted his shoulder and watched his face anxiously. Loth stood near the corner of the bathhouse, her hands clasped together as she stared at Damian with deep worry before finally turning her attention toward Alice.

"You can’t do anything for him?" Loth asked, her voice filled with worry.

"One of his demonic hearts got crushed somehow. It has been completely destroyed. It’s not something I can just fix." Alice said with a frown as she examined Damian’s condition.

"Of course it’s not something you can fix... He broke a Faustian Bargain that he would marry his fiancées, and this is the price he has to pay for it. There is nothing you can do about it."

Everyone’s attention immediately turned toward the source of the voice. Rin was nonchalantly paddling through the steamy pool of the bathhouse, looking completely relaxed and showing not even the slightest hint of concern for Damian’s condition.

"He broke a Faustian Bargain to marry his fiancées?" Rah muttered in shock.

The other women exchanged equally stunned glances, slowly beginning to understand the implications. Mary, however, looked more annoyed than shocked as she turned toward Rin.

"Even if that’s the case, you should be worried about him!" Mary scolded.

The concern was justified. Demonic hearts were not ordinary organs. They were reservoirs of demonic force, and the more demonic hearts a demon possessed, the greater the amount of demonic force they could store and utilize. Damian had three demonic hearts, meaning the destruction of one permanently removed roughly one third of his total demonic force. It was not a minor injury, especially for someone whose body already struggled under the consequences of a damaged soul.

Rin merely rolled his eyes and continued floating through the warm water. "Why would I be worried when he’s happy?"

Everyone immediately turned toward Damian. Only then did they notice the smile on his face. It was not a forced smile or one meant to reassure them. Damian was genuinely smiling, and there was a dangerous light burning behind his eyes.

"I’m finally free... And I lost only one heart for this freedom while still maintaining the benefits the deal gave me..." He laughed lightly, though his voice remained strained from the pain. "Lin Qui... I am the ultimate winner of this game!"

Everyone stared at Damian with varying degrees of confusion and disturbance. His words made sense individually, but none of them fully understood what he meant by being free or how losing one of his demonic hearts could possibly be considered a victory.

"You get to keep his women who are near the God realm as concubines, the Abyssal inheritance, and still retain the liberty of choosing who your wives... I’ll admit this time, I was wrong and should have absolutely let you handle everything on your own." Rin chuckled.

Buzz!

All four girls stared between Damian and Rin as though they had just witnessed something impossible. Only now was everything beginning to make sense.

"You mean... You are not marrying those three anymore?" Alice muttered in shock.

"How did you manage to pull it off?" Mary mumbled, still struggling to comprehend what she was hearing.

Damian shrugged Mary’s hand off his back and pulled the towel away from his lips before rising to his feet. "I just had a lot of leverage, so I made a deal they could not refuse, and now I’m free from Lin Qui’s tricks.... I’m sure that motherfucker is fuming right now." Damian walked past them and toward the pool.

Without taking his clothes off, he stepped into the water and allowed himself to sink beneath the surface. The warmth of the bath surrounded his body as his vision gradually disappeared beneath the water.

Whooosh!

A powerful wind suddenly swept through the darkness as red lightning flashed across the black clouds above him, but Damian remained unfazed. Instead, he felt strangely more relaxed in the darkness than he ever did beneath the light. The familiar presence surrounding him no longer felt as threatening as it once had. His eyes eventually settled upon the massive crimson eye occupying the darkness beneath him.

"Now you visit me on your own violation... If someone told me a day like this would come, I would never have believed it." The Abyss chuckled lightly.

Damian rolled his eyes. "That’s because you are the only one who has been honest with me from the start, and I already told Lin Qui I would never visit him again, so I would feel a bit lame if I went back on my word now."

The Abyss chuckled lightly at his words, the sound reverberating throughout the endless darkness.

"And now, you believe we are allies?" It asked.

Damian immediately shook his head. "Not exactly. But I can tell you are curious about my future, and you are willing to see it till the end... I have simply come to accept whatever happens after that."

The crimson eye stared at him for several seconds in silence, its enormous pupil remaining fixed upon Damian before the Abyss finally spoke.

"What if you find a way to cure your wounded soul and you finally bear a child.... Would you still be this dismissive of the outcome that follows after you conquer the Heavens and Underworld?" The Abyss asked.

Buzz!

Damian’s face immediately turned cold as his eyes narrowed. It was not the matter of healing his soul that caught his attention. It was the second part of the question.

"I can’t have children the normal way, what are you saying?" Damian countered.

The Abyss chuckled lightly. "We have already concluded that your former fiancées lied about a lot of things... What makes you certain they were completely truthful on that matter?"

Buzz!

Damian’s eyes widened with shock. "Is there truly a way?"

The massive crimson eye slowly nodded.

"Your inability to produce offspring has nothing to do with your physical body. It is the nature of Darkness itself."

The Abyss’s voice echoed through the realm, unnervingly calm despite the revelation.

"Darkness cannot create life on its own. The universe demands balance before it permits one existence to give birth to another. Your essence is overwhelmingly aligned with Darkness. There is no balance within you. The problem is not that Darkness is incapable of creating life. The problem is that absolute Darkness is fundamentally incomplete."

Damian’s eyes widened further as the implications began to settle within his mind.

"Light is its opposite. Where Darkness represents the absence, Light represents the presence. Where Darkness consumes, Light gives. Where Darkness ends, Light begins. Neither is complete in isolation. When Light and Darkness are brought together in the proper balance, their opposing natures stabilize one another. They do not destroy each other. They form equilibrium. That equilibrium is what the universe recognizes as a foundation for creation."

"You mean..." Damian’s voice trailed off, and the Abyss nodded in confirmation.

"That is why you cannot produce life through Darkness alone. Your essence is too imbalanced. But if your Darkness were to mix with a sufficiently powerful Light essence, the imbalance would be corrected. The two opposing forces would become one perfectly balanced foundation, and the restrictions imposed upon your existence would disappear."

Damian remained silent for several seconds before another question surfaced in his mind.

"Then why didn’t I have kids with Clara or the other humans I got with back on Earth?" Damian asked.

"Because mortals are the epitome of balance. However, if you had sexual relationships with Priestess Linda or Clara after she became a member of the Order of Moses, they could have given you a child." The Abyss admitted.

Buzz!

Damian’s heart skipped a beat, and his eyes widened at the thought of Clara giving him a child. For a brief moment, his imagination betrayed him. He could already see it, a child with hair, eyebrows, and eyes just as beautiful as her mother’s.

But his hands instinctively reached for the scar across his chest where his human heart had been ripped out, and the image slowly began to fade into the darkness of his mind. Whatever life he might have imagined with Clara belonged to a version of himself that no longer existed.

"Now, answer my question... What would happen when you regain your immortality and bear an offspring?" The Abyss asked again.

This time, Damian paused for several seconds, genuinely considering the question. An eternity ruling as the one true God, surrounded by beautiful wives, concubines, and children. A future where he had finally conquered Heaven and Hell, where everything he had suffered for had become his. Would he truly be able to give all of that up when the Abyss eventually came to take his body?

His expression gradually hardened.

"Then I will fight you to protect everything I have gained." Damian answered honestly.

A cold laughter erupted across the realm, echoing through the endless darkness surrounding them.

"GOOD... GOOD... THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO HEAR. THERE IS NOTHING MORE SATISFYING THAN SEEING YOU GAIN IT ALL, ONLY TO LOSE IT ALL TO ME." The Abyss chuckled in a sinister voice.