"Wake up my child." Darkness spoke in Gremory's mind, relieving all the pressure he was feeling.
He was still feeling the fear and anger of the dead, but there was no pain anymore. Just the awful smell of thousands of dead orcs around him.
Then he mounted Cerberus quickly and rushed into the city, following the anger of the deads.
Half the city was already destroyed once he got there, the humans were fighting against more than 15k orcs and were losing.
The sun was already high in the sky, but it was totally covered by dense smoke from the burned houses.
The same awful smell was there, but because of the humans dead on the streets of the city.
Gremory looked to a corner in the street, where a mother died protecting two small children, and soon remembered Neywell talking about his beautiful wife and children.
'We lost the war.'
The mages were not even flying anymore because they had almost no mana and were focusing on small spells. But the soldiers didn't stop fighting, even with this enormous disadvantage, and stood fighting near their dead families and friends.
The mixture of regret, pain, and every kind of bad feeling was clear to Gremory, but the only feeling he was getting with all this was happiness.
'Why? Why this feeling keeps coming back to me when bad things happen?' Gremory thought confused and stunned by the enormous pleasure he was feeling with the pain of everyone around him.
Was not just about the dead anymore, and of everyone else, since they were close to death too.
He could feel the pain of his allies, his friends, and even the pain of Rudo once he was wounded.
It was all too good for Gremory, but he kept remembering the conversation with Robert and his enemy became clear once again.
He rushed towards the orc army and started swinging his dual blade, activating shadow impulse with every swing. But it was more powerful than before, his pupil doubled once again but he was still in control of his body.
The flow of immeasurable mana came to him again, and he started moving with ten times the speed of before. The screams of the battle soon became only the orcs screams, while dozens and even hundreds of orcs were being crushed with every Shadow Impulse.
But at the same time, the bone on his arms was cracking and bleeding.
Yet, he kept fighting, his vision blurred and he was not able to see almost anything, everything became blurry for him. However, he didn't stop and became even more fast, cutting everything in his path as letting only destruction and death behind.
Some orcs managed to hit Gremory, and one of them even stabbed his chest. Blood came out of his mouth, the fear and the cold of death came to him just like on the first battlefield.
Yet, he didn't stop, he was dying but the connection with the abyss was getting stronger the more closely he got from death.
He knew that death would be the end for him too and he was afraid of dying, but he kept fighting until everything around him die.
His vision was still blurred and he barely was conscious. So, once the orcs died, he walked towards the humans thinking that they were just more orcs.
The Oracle began to liberate even more mana to him, reinforcing his body while his blood mixed with the blood of the orcs.
He was not using his shadow armor anymore, so now he looked just a redpoint holding a sword. He rushed towards the human army and prepared to launch shadow impulse over them just like he did with the orc army.
And then suddenly, he heard the scream of Claire.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING GREMORY?"
Her voice was clear to him and he stopped the attack.
'What am I doing?'
Once Gremory stopped, his shell flattered and he lost control over the dark energy absorbing every dead for miles. Every human, every orc, and every friend on the battlefield was now becoming part of him.
Every feeling, anger, regret, and pain mixture once again inside his head and the pain was even bigger than his body breaking during the battle.
At the same time, the pleasure came to him and was just too much for him. The different feelings at the same time made him lose consciousness and fall bleeding on the ground.
The immense amount of dark energy coming out of thousands of dead bodies was clear to everyone around, while the bodies of their enemies and family became dust.
------
Gremory woke up in the abyss, the darkness was near to him, and spoke calmly.
"Your hunger grows my child."
Gremory was still confused with everything then asked.
"What happened?"
"You finally become close to death my child." The darkness replied.
"What? Those feelings... were not mine, right?"
"You are the connection of them to the abyss, so it's natural to feel them once they became part of you. You just didn't understand the connection until now, but it's clear now."
"So... I am going to keep feeling the deads just like before?"
"Yes, but don't worry. You will learn soon how to manipulate these feelings just like you learned how to manipulate the shadows."
"I don't think that will be that easy, the pain was too much for me."
"Then embrace the pain as part of you... It was good to talk to you my child, but I think that is time for you to wake up." The darkness spoke while Gremory left the abyss and woke up in his bed on Hjmar.