lpffa Chapter 183: Confrontation
Chapter 183: Confrontation
"Human," Yoru called in a voice of a huntress luring in a prey. " Come over here. I need you to tend to my dress."
Damon stared at her back for several seconds.
The invitation sounded innocent, which alone made it beyond suspicious.
His gaze shifted toward the discarded hairpins resting on the bedside table before returning to Yoru.
"I’m not a servant," he finally said in a tone even colder than he intended it to be.
She responded without turning. "You see, my servants can’t tend to me... not with a human staying in my chamber three nights longer than anticipated."
Damon immediately regretted opening his mouth.
Yoru sat at the edge of the bed with perfect posture, her long black hair spilling down her back like liquid shadow. Her wing shifted lazily before settling again.
She waited patiently with the quiet certainty of someone accustomed to having the world adjust itself around her.
Damon sighed.
"This feels like a trap."
"It is."
The immediate answer earned a blink from him.
Yoru tilted her head slightly.
"At least now you cannot complain that I was dishonest."
"I wasn’t planning to."
"Good."
Damon considered several possible responses before deciding none of them were worth the effort.
With the resignation of a man walking willingly toward a problem, he crossed the room.
The moment he stopped beside the bed, Yoru lifted one hand and pointed toward the intricate fastening running down the back of her dress.
"There."
Damon looked at the impossibly complicated arrangement of ribbons, clasps, and embroidered loops with a perplexed expression. "You need help taking this off?"
"No."
He frowned. "No?"
"No."
"Then what exactly am I doing?"
Yoru’s shoulders moved ever so slightly.
The closest thing she ever came to a laugh.
"Tending to it."
That clarified absolutely nothing.
He reached toward the fastening anyway, carefully working through the first clasp.
The material was unlike anything he had handled before. It felt almost alive beneath his fingers, shifting subtly as if woven from strands of midnight itself.
It was only then that he realised that the most ordinary-looking dress was in fact a Relic.
Several moments passed in silence as Damon tried to work his way around the clasp.
For once, it wasn’t an angry silence.
Just a strange one.
The kind that settled after an argument had already ended but before either side was entirely willing to admit it.
Finally, after far longer than it should’ve taken, Damon finished the final clasp.
"There," he said. "Isn’t it a relic? Couldn’t u simply dismiss it?"
The dress loosened slightly around her shoulders, revealing more of her white jade porcelain skin.
"Dismiss it?" She turned slowly toward him, her dress loosening more with each movement. "If you want to get it off me, you’re going to have to work a little harder than that."
"If I wanted to, you don’t think I would’ve done that already?’
"Oh?" Her lips curved up. "So confident... But did you forget about my earlier warning, human?"
She leaned forward and took a small hold of his collar.
This time, her grip wasn’t filled with frustration, she pulled him gently in, gently enough so that he could break free at any second, though he chose not to.
Slowly, her back hit the back of the bed, her loose dress dropping onto the white bedsheets, leaving nothing to the imagination.
He hovered just above her, his arms propped on both sides of her head.
"Get this armour out..." she said, "Unless you want me to rip it apart..."
Damon held her gaze for a moment before dismissing his armour, the Relic vanishing in an instant.
Her fingertips and nails trailed across the fabric of his shirt, digging more into it with each movement.
"Careful," he said, his voice low. "I might bite back."
"Mmm, threatening me with a good time?" her voice purred with excitement. Her arms coiled around his neck, but just as she was about to pull him in, he pulled away.
"Three days..." he murmured, his tone more serious now.
Yoru blinked, still processing what just happened as he spoke.
"I’ll be away for some time. I need to figure out a way to break the bond. Try not to destroy the world before then."
She held his gaze, there was more amusement in her expression than she would’ve liked to admit.
"No promises," she replied before leaning forward and pulling him in for a kiss. "I’ll be looking forward to that biting you promised me when u return."
Damon had a suspicion that she was looking forward to more than just biting, but after getting pulled for a second, then a third kiss, he finally stepped back and called for his domain.
Immediately, the hot dry air of the Dragon Clan territory was replaced by the familiar biting cold.
Damon took a moment to draw a long, sharp breath of that freezing cold air before activing his Absolute Comprehension ability.
Despite his earlier confidence, he had no idea how to truly sever the bond between the Phoenix Clan Leader and Ivy.
He could manipulate his class or abilities, force evolution upon them, but breaking he could not see or access was quite different.
Still, with his Absolute Comprehension active he let his consciousness slip toward the threads of power and began to search for answers.
He could see the making of his status screen, its classes, abilities even the attributes, but something was missing.
There were things from his status screen that were not there, and with no better options out there, this was his only lead to explore.
’My talent isn’t here,’ he realised.
Though it wasn’t much different from an ability or an attribute, his only talent, Abyssal Sword Art, was not there and judging by the empty space of darkness in between his classes, it wasn’t that it was impossible to see it, it was just that he couldn’t perceive it yet.
He searched for an hour more, looking to the answer on how to expand his understanding of the threads before him until it hit him.
The ability itself. It was right there before him this entire time.
Unlike his other abilities, Absolute Comprehension never evolved.
Before he simply thought of it as the final version of the ability, but now that he actually studied the threads that made the ability he realised that it could be done.
The patterns were different from everything he had seen in other abilities, complex in a way that made no sense for his current knowledge.
If this was him months ago, trying to manipulate those threads would be inconceivable. But now, with his mana reserves higher than any mortal being could’ve dreamed of, he didn’t have to rush.
Slowly, he began to weave the threads of his Absolute Comprehension ability, learning the patterns along the way as the slowed time of his domain ticked away, one millisecond at a time.
***
Somewhere far and deep into the Phoenix Clan territory, far beyond where the battle of the four Divine Beasts took place, inside the largest chamber of the clan’s estate, two figures stood in a dimly lit chamber, standing opposite of one another.
They were in the middle of a one sided heated argument which was not going well for the other side.
SMACK!
Phoenix Clan Leader’s hand smacked Ivy straight across the face, the force whipping her head to the side.
"You damn insolent girl! I gave you orders! Do you have any idea what kind of danger you put me in? Do you?" Phoenix Clan Leader screamed, her voice echoing across the empty chamber.
Ivy held the side of her face which was now red as she responded. "I did this to protect you. I knew he wouldn’t—"
SMACK!
The Phoenix Clan Leader’s hand smacked the other side of Ivy’s face. The sound resounded across the chamber.
"Do not speak out of turn, human. Look around! Look what happens to the clan that doesn’t listen!" She screamed.
Ivy already knew what she referred to. The Clan Leader was the only surviving member of the Phoenix Clan. While others died, she kept the resurrection technique all to herself, watching them fall without a hindrance in her gaze.
"Get out of my sight! Go to your chamber and absorb the feathers I had given you! Do not come out until every trace of your humanity is gone."
Ivy lingered behind for a second longer before turning around and heading to her so cold chamber.
It was a massive room made of dark polish stone with not a single furniture in sight.
There were prison cells on Earth that looked better, but that’s not what was going through Ivy’s mind at the moment.
It was her brief reunion with Damon.
A flicker of hope ignited in her heart. Perhaps if its him, perhaps it she can keep her humanity until they meet again, then she won’t be used as the Phoenix Clan’s puppet.