Chapter 438 – The Secrets Of A Foodie

The fortieth floor was the final A Rank floor and, like all the other final floors for a Rank, was an amalgamation of all the previous A Rank floors. This meant that largely the floor was a haunted forest, but there were also Spatial affinity creatures spread throughout.

With the availability of so many Spatial affinity Demonic Beasts, Damion wondered if he should adapt his familiar spell to the Spatial affinity next, but he decided first to work out a better way to manage his companions. He already knew adapting the spell was possible and, with his mastery of Nashto, very do able. However, he did not envision himself as a beast tamer.

The other issue was logistics. Sure, he could bond with a Demonic Beast of every affinity he had, and more if he acquired additional affinities, but what would he do with all the creatures? People were used to Phil, but that did not mean they would feel the same if he introduced a half dozen Demonic Beasts. He needed a way to keep his companions hidden. This would relieve the fears of the people of Atlantis as well as keep his enemies in the dark about his true capabilities. If he went into a fight alone and could suddenly call out two, three or even four Demonic Beasts to fight with him, it would certainly change the balance of any conflict.

For now, he focused on reaching the next floor. The passageway to the forty-first floor was not far and aside from a few glances as he passed, no one bothered Damion as he made his way across the final A Rank floor.

After crossing through the passageway, Damion breathed in the dense mana of the S Rank forty-first floor. According to the reports from the S Ranks who had cleared the floor and continued deeper, this floor, and the next three were giant forests. Giant did not just mean the trees were enormous, but that everything was. What was truly odd, was that there were not new types of Demonic Beasts that were enormous, but the same Stone Bears, Forest Froth Spiders, Lotus Dears, Primeys Elks, Wind Wolves, even the Stripped Wood Squirrels were in every way, except size, the same as you would find in any other Realm Breach.

This led the S Rankers to believe that perhaps it was not the Demonic Beasts that grew in size, but that all the people entering were made smaller. Damion, with his previous world’s knowledge of science, rudimentary as it was, thought that idea was ridiculous.

Then he considered magic.

Even if he fully understood the Nashto language, he was still a long way from understanding all the various applications of magic itself. It might very well be possible that the passageway to these floors could shrink people, but he still thought it more likely the labyrinth had simply created a few floors where the Demonic Beasts, and everything except the people coming to the floor, were one hundred times their normal size.

Whatever the exact reason for the oddity, Damion did not care. He was here to train his magic power. Since this was an S Rank floor and had numerous A Rank beasts of various strengths, he did not dare to try to cross the floor to the next.

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Sitting down in the safe area around the passageway, Damion began to meditate and work on his training exercises to raise his magic power. While he was training, Nyx emerged from his shadow and began to wander around the safe zone. The Shadow Cat seemed quite comfortable in the higher density mana, but unlike humans, the Demonic Beast could not consciously train to raise its power level.

After watching how Phil had grown over the course of their bond, Damion had a rough idea how Demonic Beasts increased their strength in the wild. As such, from his spatial artifact, Damion tossed Nyx the carcass of a B Rank Demonic Beast.

The Shadow Cat sniffed it and then quickly began to tear into the flesh. If Damion had an A Rank carcass, he would have tossed it out instead, since Nyx was a peak B Rank Demonic Beast for it to grow as fast as possible it would need to feast on stronger remains.

Damion continued his training while the Shadow Cat fed. After a few hours, only skeletal remains of the carcass were left. Nyx had very expertly cleaned the bones and was now grooming itself. The Shadow Cat’s way of eating was much different from Phil, who mostly just tore flesh off and consumed it in its search for the core of a creature.

‘More?’ Nyx asked through the bond.

If they were only on an A Rank floor, Damion would have considered telling the Shadow Cat to go out and hunt. However, given the danger of the floor they were in, and how every Demonic Beast they were likely to encounter was larger than they were, he decided to instead toss out another carcass from his spatial artifact.

The Shadow Cat quickly began to prove to be just as much of a foodie as Phil was. In the three days that Damion spent training his magic power, Nyx consumed six Demonic Beast carcasses. Each of which were roughly equal to it in size.

From his schooling Damion knew the reason a Demonic Beast could consume so much was due to magic being at work more than a digestive system. Demonic Beasts were considered creatures of magic, and rightly so. Their flesh, blood and bones were all rich in mana. When their bodies were broken down they turn primarily into mana. This is what drove a Demonic Beast’s growth and also how it consumed so much. If Nyx or Phil tried to eat the same amount of normal food, or even Ferocious Beasts, they would quickly get a full stomach. But since their bodies converted the flesh of Demonic Beasts directly into mana to fuel the growth of their magic power, the only time they got full was when they approached the limits of magic power their physical body could hold.

Just as a human’s body could not contain strong magic power unless it was physically able, the same applied to Demonic Beasts and Ferocious Beasts alike. Of course, beasts had the advantage of subconsciously spreading their magic throughout their body to continuously strengthen it. This meant they were unlikely to ever encounter a bottle neck. While humans had to balance training their physical bodies and their magic power.

Damion’s way of constantly using training bangles to slowly raise his body’s power was effective, and had kept him ahead of most bottlenecks, it still took time. He just hoped he had enough time to come as close to S Rank as he could before the decision was made to head back to the Mother World.

Ultimately, the time he had depended on how quickly, if at all, the S Rankers found the midpoint of the labyrinth. If they reached it soon, then it would only be a short time before the Atlantis City Council requested the aid of the S Rank assembly. However, if they could not reach the midpoint, then they might have to ask for help first, or possibly involve Mage Thresbane to clear the floor they were stopped by. Either scenario would theoretically give Damion more time to train, but more than likely he would be called on to convince the Assembly and the other White Zones to offer their aid.